Force Only Brings Hate

Force only Brings Hate

You don’t believe in wars, you can’t see yourself touching a fire gun and you are lucky enough to be force into a program that will negatively impact the rest of your life. In fact, this is what happened to one of my brothers that was called to serve his country, Spain. In Spain ten years ago the military service was compulsory for males, unless you were really sick, had a disability or had a very convincing reason to avoid the service. Moreover, the army did not accept objectors of conscience. If you didn’t want to do the military service, you will go to prison or you will have to desert. Being force to do something against your values only brings hate.
Forcing my brother to go to the army not only affected him; furthermore, it affected the whole family. Even before my brother went to serve in the army all of this situation caused all sort of arguments between my parents and as a consequence among us. The house was full of tension and we wanted my brother to leave to have some peace in the house. My father was very pro army and my mom didn’t really care. My father had this belief that said: in order to be a real man you had to go to the army. While in the army my brother started sending very depressing letters and you could see how angry he was. At that time, he will go on and on talking about the abuse of authority from his superiors, soon the letters stopped coming.



Because his assignment was in one of the northern colonies of Africa, Melilla, non of the family were able to visit him. Moreover he lost his permissions to visit us because he was always punished for arguing or disobeying his superiors. As a consequence, he would end up shining more boots that he had to or cleaning weapons most of the time. Meanwhile in Spain my mom will spent a lot of time preparing goodies to send him. Not being able to see him for such a long time affected all of us, specially my mom who wondered what my brother ate and if he was warm enough.
After a long rough year that it looked never-ending for my mom, finally my brother came home. We were excited to see him again and curious about all the stories he had to tell. Nonetheless, the minute he showed on the doorstep, we realize something happened to the cheerful brother we once used to know. He was skinny and his face was expressionless. We all cuddle him but there wasn’t a respond. He went straight to his room, slum the door and that was his first day home and many more. As a result of his unstable character my parents end up argued again and again. A little part of us knew my brother wasn’t to a good start. No matter what, my mom was happy to have his baby home. On the other hand my dad would continue exalting the values of the army and how good it did to my brother; he didn’t want to accept that the army did worst to his kid than what himself dreamt about. My dad wasn’t ready to face the crude reality, therefore all of that cause all sort of disagreements among family.



It all comes down to the bottom of forcing somebody to do something against his will. Force brings hate. The army took my brother at a young age, in a time in his life where he was trying to figure out himself and as a response he got this brutal authority and not much understanding from his family. Unfortunately this episode was just the beginning of too many failures in his life; In fact, he never finish his studies or kept a job for a while, he had been in and out of the house since he returned from Africa and tried to commit suicide several times in the process. Nowadays, at forty seven years old he is still living with my parents and we don’t know what the future will hold when my parents are gone. I still think that he wasn’t heard, he was never understood by society and precisely by my father. Fortunately for the new generations things had changed and now the military service in Spain is not compulsory anymore; nonetheless, a lot of innocent had to suffer psychological and physical abuse affecting them and their families for the rest of their life. Through our lives we all make mistakes, and hopefully we learnt something on the way, personally I and other members of my family learnt that force only brings hate.