"The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall. It is this Chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit. I went back to the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out. In the interval it had been buried. It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck."
The above is a quote from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It's one of many passages in the book that really affected me. To try to imagine being there with the constant shelling, feeling the personal vulnerability of the Front, and experiencing the ever present rot, disease, death, pain and misery... and then to get to the point that you're indifferent to it because you believe it's just a matter of luck whether you live or die...
I don't believe in Chance, I believe in God. I believe in agency and the ability to hear and feel the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We all will suffer in this life, and we all will die. But what a horridly hopeless feeling to go through life believing your existence is based on mere chance.
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