Do you love your country?

Love, not as a word or a slogan on your lips, but as a feeling in your heart, like you love your grandparents.

I have the feeling of that love since I was 8 or 9, when I was still in Hà Dừa Primary School, of Hà Dừa Parish, in Thành, Diên Khánh, Khánh Hòa.

Thành or Thành Cổ Diên Khánh is a fortress built by Võ Tánh during the war between Nguyễn Ánh (Gia Long) and The Tây Sơn. Circling the fortress is a deep moat, probably always filled with water in the old days, but today, only in rainy season, water would flow into the moat from Sông Cái, through a 150m-long trench.

My home was right on the outside rim of that moat, in front of the West Gate of the fortress (Cửa Tây). I used to go on the top of the gate with friends, looking down on traffic entering the fortress from outside. I had the fortune to see that fortress when there still were relics of the main ancient building called Hoàng Cung, with its broken high floor and huge dark-brown wood pillars lying broken on the floor. The fortress was a place for us kids to play, but today I really appreciate the historical significance of Thành.

West Gate, on top of the fotress wall, the right is outside the fortress, the left is inside. The white mootocycle guy on the right is on top of the moat. A pipe underneath the street connects the two sides of the moat. My home is behind that white momocycle guy. The brick way on top of the wall was not there – only grass and a dirt path. I think they have put the bricks on recently for tourism purposes.

Anyway, from that place, each Sunday my dad would take me and my younger brother Sơn on his Puch MS-50 moped to visit my aunt’s family in Tân Bình, 30 km away on National Highway 1. Along the highway were ricefields or fruit gardens, with a group of houses once in a while. During the hot season, the ricefields, having been harvested clean, now just dry brown land, were baked, parched and cracked under the burning sun . And in those parched cracked fields, once in a while I would see a kid, probably my age, but very thin and dark, sat on a cow so skinny that I could see all its bones and ribs, walking slowly.

Every time I met that scene, I don’t remember now that tears actually came out, but I always felt like crying inside. “Oh, my country is so poor, and this kid is so poor. I can’t stand in that burning field for one minute. Don’t think about going around in it with a skinny cow.” And I had the distinct feeling of loving my country and my people so much in my heart.

My dear friends, loving our country and our people is a real feeling in our heart, not just a word or a slogan.

All you need to do is to look around you, at the poor, the sick, the disabled, the homeless, the beggars, the weepers, the mourners, the sufferers, the hopeless… then you shall have the distinct feeling of love toward them.

Loving our country and our people is essential for our living, because it gives us a strong sense of belonging to a large family with a piece of land and many brothers and sisters to love and to protect. That is the feeling of a purpose. And knowing our purpose in life is a blessing from Heaven, because so many people in the world have no life purpose. They only feel lonely and lost all their life.

Wish we all love our country and our people.

With compassion,

Hoành

© copyright 2023
Trần Đình Hoành
Permitted for non-commercial use
www.dotchuoinon.com