'Children of Gaza I'

On a chilly October morning, I scrolled through my Instagram feed and stumbled upon a reel by Motaz Azaiza, a Palestinian journalist who documents the daily struggles of his people. The reel captured a scene of hope and resilience at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza, where hundreds of children were expressing themselves with painting and drawing. They were using bright colours and shapes to fill the blank sheets of paper with scribbles and paint strokes. But their activity was interrupted by a sudden blast of noise from the sky. A fighter jet flew over them and the children instinctively ducked down in fear, clutching their brushes and crayons. They looked up at the sky for a brief moment, wondering if the bombs would fall on them. But then, they gathered their courage and started painting again.

The caption to the reel read “ Live from Al- Shifa Hospital. Kids trying to have fun by drawing on papers while the bombing is going on everywhere around them”.

The Instagram reel by Motaz Azaiza made me reflect and ponder about the innate nature of humans and how they cope with adverse circumstances. In this instance, the human instinct to live overcame the urge to survive quite spontaneously. The children did not let the fear of death stop them from enjoying their activities. One can argue that the social conditioning of the children, because of the perpetual brutality of the circumstances, made them immune to any survival instinct kicking in, leading them to look for cover. They might have become accustomed to the sound of fighter jets and bombs, and learned to ignore them as much as possible. But can upbringing and social reality supersede millions of years of evolutionary survival instincts? Or Is there something else at play here, such as a psychological mechanism of denial, dissociation, or resilience?

A second explanation can be as simple as saying that this is what children do, they play . But a simple rhetorical retort is that they also don't die this brutally either, normally, leading us to believe on the face value that there is a force at work here which makes a child move the brush and keeps her focused despite life threatening situations. A place where survival instincts don't lead a person to act with fear.

Living and breathing is as important as creating, if not less.