The ancient Greeks believed that after death, you ventured into Hades, the underworld. There you would remain, unless by some stroke of luck or heroism you managed to finagle yourself god status. If so, you'd bypass the boatman and spend the rest of your days (AKA: eternity) on Mount Olympus.
But there were some ancient peoples, east of the Aegean, who felt differently. For them, the actions of one life set the stage for the next. Ideally, each new life would give your soul insight, so you would make better decisions next time. Members of your past lives would reappear in your present, giving you a chance to make right with them. Karma, it was called.
Maybe, if we had known that the afterlife was neither ours not theirs, but a mix of both, we would have behaved differently. Repeating the same mistakes, time and time again, got pretty tiresome. But the evil (or silly errors) that men do lives past them. The war we lived in, the giants we walked with, will never be forgotten, even though I was.
But G-d, or the gods (for what difference does it make, one or many? We all were -- and still are -- desperately searching for some greater being to give substance and truth to the befuddlement of our lives) had decided to give me another chance. A chance for my name to be known.
The world has changed. War no longer has glory, or personality. There are no giants of war, only barbarians. No one charges in on horseback, or flings arrows. Only buttons are pressed to release bombs to destroy the earth. My people would have despaired to see war brought down. To me, it is all the same. Killing is killing, by sword or by bomb, but for many, war became too eas, to be inhumane to man. Then, men understood that it was human beings they were killing. They saw their faces. Now, they are able to shoot blind. Thousands upon thousands are killed, and yet people shrug. "What could I have done? What role did I have?"
This time, my role was cast like die before I was born.
I did not know it then. I do now.
This is my karma. And this is my story.