We all have our daily battles. For me, these often have included little things, like holding my shit together while my daughter danced in front of the mirror instead of getting dressed for school or brushing her teeth. Lately, my battles have expanded to getting a deep breath after climbing the stairs, or getting up from a chair. Or just standing in a corner, leaning against a wall. Thankfully, that sort of battle is still relatively rare for me and only lasts a short time, but they remind me of how unimportant (or maybe very important) other battles have been–not in the fighting, of course, but in the experiences around them.

There are real battles out there, too, and we read about them every day. Some of us, or some of you, really, actually fight them on the front lines, while the rest of us continue to go on and on about how tough we have it or how some little old thing is just sooooooo damn hard. It’s all bullshit, really; not much of what we are going through is all that terribly difficult. Not the bill writing, not the last minute run to the cleaners, not the fund-raiser we committed to without thinking it through… Not even the haunting memories of abandonment or the broken ribs or the chronic illness. These are all part of our experience, and some of them are terrible, but for the most part, there are more terrible stories out there. There are REAL battles out there, painful ones, heroic ones, many pointless and futile but no less brutal ones. And then, for the most part, there are ours.

I’m not going to pussyfoot around and say that I feel that I have it all that easy. I don’t. I’m not at all sure what I have in store for me over the coming months or years, but I am planning on plowing through whatever it is, however hard it is, and fighting if I need to as hard as I can. Sure, the uncertainty of HOW or WHAT is daunting and even frightening in its own way. But I’m not having my limbs cut off by some fanatical terrorist and I’m not being shot at while my comrades fall around me and there are no bombs going off just over there… I’ve got a tiny battle to fight, for myself and my family, and I have the good fortune of feeling pretty good right now and knowing that time is still on my side and I have the luxury of living in Los Angeles and access to truly good health care professionals who are covered by an insurance plan that (because of some recent legislation that barely got squeezed through called the Affordable Care Act) cannot now dump me and in fact is good enough to cover some of the top professionals I need to see. So my fortunes far outweigh the costs of the battle I have so far endured. But that isn’t even the point of this.

Every six weeks or so, on average, I see my friend Carlos. I’m pretty sure that’s his name. I’d ask, except I’ve always been afraid of getting too close, feeling too responsible and knowing that, ultimately, I can’t save him. Not with my current life, as long as I’ve known him. He’s generally homeless, though he does often tell me about some friend who is letting him rent space in a garage. He makes most of his money by collecting recycling. I met him when he came to my door one day looking for the previous owner. We bonded over his love of St. Francis, as statue of whom my wife put by our front door. I neither know much about St. Francis nor care particularly about the statue aside from its aesthetic appeal, but Carlos’ joy at seeing the statue struck me, and then he told me his story.

Carlos came to this country from El Salvador, where he has family still. He’s here illegally, though he has tried diligently to get asylum or to get immigrant status. He speaks broken English, always trying to improve his vocabulary. He’s very soulful, very sweet, and he is struggling with leukemia that has left him weak and frail, but never down and out. Carlos has been beaten, he has been hired for pennies to do life-threatening work which has left him scarred. He has been treated like dirt and he has cried to me of both his pain and his joys. And whenever I say goodbye to him, he tells me he will pray for my angel, who is my daughter, but who he insists looks exactly like an angel would look.

I never feel sorry for myself after Carlos stops by. And he doesn’t come by looking for handouts, either. Sometimes I have given him a few dollars for something he needed, but never very much and mostly none at all. I do give him my recycling if I have the right cans or bottles, and I give him some fruit (he is also hypoglycemic) and water. Mostly he fills me in on his life struggles to get documented so he can get a real job, being a busboy or a janitor or some other big dream of stability and a better roof over his head. I worry about him a bit, I don’t see him for a month or two, I begin to dwell on my own problems too much and eventually he shows up to remind me.

It isn’t the wartime that matters.

It’s the peace.