I’m sitting on the couch watching the television. It has become an absent-minded, feverish ritual. Something of little importance, little consequence, little expectation. It’s one of those shows that's been copied a hundred times, aired out like product in a factory, consumed by robotic, vague viewers alike.

Suddenly, it’s six o’clock, and the news makes its habitual appearance, like the midday chime of Big Ben. And, suddenly, the screen fills with vision. Vision as strong, yet subtle as an epiphany, saturated with destruction and despair. A missile, piercing as a bident, hits a building, effortlessly shredding it apart, like paper. Another prods the Earth, scarring her. Totalitarian, green tanks rumble moodily, stony faced soldiers swaying with the mechanical rhythm. Crippled, burnt-out cars, buildings with their insides hanging out, like carcasses.

Caught amongst all this are the people. Their faces crumple with emotion - glassy eyed, lips parted, brows drawn together - looking the way a child does as she cries, shivering and numb, innocent and helpless - angels, sick of sin. A baby bawls as he’s torn away from his father. A man embraces two elderly women, their eyes closed, tight lipped with prejudice, and hope, and something greater, in unison. A man and woman peer into each other’s eyes, oozing with glaring uncertainty, grief, heartbreak and anguish. A man in uniform gazes up at the sky, at the heavens, breathtakingly in acceptance amongst the crushed and shattered ruins of hell engulfing him. Pictures of the dead, contrived and vulnerable, their faces blurred and censored. Families crying at mass graves so loud as to wake the dead.

It is so macabre, so eye-wateringly unfathomable. Like the scene from a sick and twisted Stephen King movie. I’m too scared to move, to breathe. The futile fragility of the scene grasps me in a chokehold. I don’t know these people - I had no reason to - yet now, I would advocate for them till the end.

Every pixel, every photon buzzes with meaning. I’m frazzled, unsettled, yet I don’t want to turn the TV off. I have homework, commitments, demons in worlds other than these, but they seem ephemeral and trivial now. Once the red button is pressed, and everyone and everything is plunged into darkness, life will inevitably go on, but the significance of the moment will be impaired, the vision forgotten, lost. All will be lost.

But it is the yellow and blue, dripping like paint. The yellow light of hope, sunlight. The yellow of patriotism, of comradeship and resilience. Persistent hiraeth, pragmatism and stoicism. Then, the blue - no, not that of melancholy, but - global solidarity and peace. The royal blue of sovereignty and democracy. The wars that do not get talked about. The power of humanity amongst its blatant absence. Faith, and fate. They will not be lost, they will not die in the barbaric wilderness. We are not lost. It's what matters. And so, I won't press the red button ever since.