I’m turning forty today. Rather than reminiscing on the years gone by, I find myself thinking about the books I read over the past year. Most shared three common characteristics: they are classics, I first read them during my studies in the UK some twenty years ago, and their central theme is war and love.

Fret not—this will not be a book review or an excuse to brag about the doorstoppers I enjoy reading. Mentioning the three books I intend to discuss today is merely a segue to a thought they generated; one that has stuck in my head and needs to get out, with writing being the means to set it free.

The first book is the Iliad, in Emily Wilson’s brilliant translation, who has breathed new life into the classic epic poem. Originally an oral composition, it evolved over generations of performers who adapted and transmitted it before eventually taking the written form in which it survives today. The Iliad is many things, including a love story, but above all, it is a story about men who shared the same language, religion and heritage, yet fought one another in an utterly unnecessary and futile war. It is an ancient story that often feels remarkably contemporary.

Allow me to recall a scene which, although not among the central episodes of the poem, nevertheless strikes me as particularly poignant in illustrating the futility of the conflict. I refer to Book 7, where Ajax, an Achaean and second in battle only to Achilles, fights Hector, prince of Troy and its greatest warrior. Their duel lasts an entire day before being suspended at nightfall with Zeus’ intervention. Having reached a standstill, before parting the two men honoured each other by exchanging gifts: Ajax gives Hector his war belt, while Hector gives Ajax his sword.

While this iconic scene is usually referenced to exemplify honour and respect for a worthy opponent, it primarily illustrates something else for me, namely the irrationality of war. How illogical is it for men who, in their essence, share the same humanity and have so much in common, to end up trying to murder one another, leaving behind widows, orphans and grieving parents?

This notion, the futility of war, stayed with me long after I had completed my re-reading of the Iliad. It resurfaced when I encountered it again while re-reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace, about a month before this year’s parliamentary elections in Cyprus. Tolstoy’s epic novel contains a scene that exposes war for what is: pointless, futile, and anything but glorious. Upon revisiting it, I was left dumbfounded. I remembered the scene from my first reading some twenty years ago and recalled being deeply touched by it. Yet, reading it again with the “wisdom” of an additional two decades behind me, I realised that I seldom grasped its full significance back then.

I am referring to the scene at the Battle of Austerlitz involving Prince Andrei Bolkonski, a noble and honourable man willing to sacrifice everything to distinguish himself in battle. Like many ambitious young men, he idolises Napoleon—his enemy—as the embodiment of glory and greatness. In Tolstoy’s famous scene, Andrei charges towards the French front in an effort to rally the retreating Russian soldiers. Moments later, he is shot and falls, seemingly mortally wounded, in the middle of the battlefield.

Obviously, I cannot do justice to the brilliance of Tolstoy’s depiction of the fallen hero, but suffice to say that Prince Andrei lies on the ground, unable to move, gazing at the vast sky above him. The mayhem of the battle continues all around him, yet his attention remains fixed on the clouds in the sky ahead. If it was a film, the sound would suddenly fade, reflecting the hero’s growing detachment from the battle and the motivations that brought him there.

Lying on the ground wounded, Andrei gradually disassociates not only from the battle but also from the life he had lived until then; a life in which glory in the battlefield exemplified an ideal worth dying for. The collapse of these convictions becomes evident when his idol, Napoleon, passed by and noticed the wounded man. Under different circumstances, Andrei would have been excited by the mere sight of the great Emperor. Yet now, gazing at the sky above him, he is indifferent to the man standing over him. Tolstoy even describes Napoleon’s voice as distant and insignificant, as though it belonged to a world Andrei already abandoned.

War’s disillusionment is also evident in a third book I read last year—this one for the first time. Originally written in Greek by the pacifist writer Stratis Myrivillis, Life in the Tomb is, in my view, perhaps the greatest anti-war novel ever written, certainly in Greek. Unlike both the Iliad and War and Peace, it is narrated not from the perspective of a nobleman, but from that of an ordinary soldier.

The novel takes the form of a series of letters / diary entries written from the trenches of the First World War. Addressing his fiancé, Myrsini, Sergeant Antonis Kostoulas reveals a world dominated not by heroism or patriotic ideals, but by fear, loneliness, decay and death. Through these letters/diary entries, he is also addressing the life he left behind—a life worth living, in contrast to his miserable existence in the trenches.

Yet, it is precisely the promise of that life, and of the love awaiting him within it, that keeps him going. It is what allows him to persevere amid the savagery of the trenches. After all, soldiers who disserted—either purposely or as a result of shell shock—were executed. The prospect of returning to Myrsini and to civilian life is what sustains him through the bleakness of life in the trenches.

These three books are examples of a historical—and, for me, a personal—evolution in attitudes towards war and love. In the Iliad, the honourable man is the one who fights for his country; the hero who sacrifices everything for his homeland. The joys of civilian life are sidelined to the glory of war. Yet, even there, we occasionally glance beyond the dominant theme: moments in which our common humanity transcends the divisions of conflict.

War and Peace still places warfare at its centre, but through Prince Andrei’s experience at Austerlitz, Tolstoy dismantles the Homeric ideal of the hero whose life is worth sacrificing for glory on the battlefield. Life in the Tomb takes this evolution a step beyond. It moves beyond mere disillusionment with war: love is not simply halted by conflict; it becomes the sole source of meaning amidst the irrationality and savagery of life in the trenches.

What I find particularly interesting is that, in all three books, the most memorable scenes are not those fought on the battlefield; they are the moments of human connection that reveal the absurdity of war.

The parallels with the present are many. Some are less visible to those of us in Europe and the West, such as the ongoing conflict in Sudan. Others are impossible to ignore: the tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children, women, the elderly, and other non-combatants, killed during the latest escalation of the conflict, and, perhaps most obviously when reading the Iliad, the ongoing and entirely unnecessary war in Ukraine.

Reading these books, where love and human connection blossom like flowers in the snow against all odds, one thought remained with me. Since antiquity, war has largely been about finding ever more efficient and ingenious ways for metal to penetrate human bodies, causing the maximum possible harm—ideally death. For generations, men have been socialized to associate honour with the taking of life in the context of war. Yet the same bodies violently penetrated by metal are also capable of sensing a gentle breeze; the same bodies that send signals of affection, desire and intimacy at the hint of a touch. The violence inflicted upon the human body becomes all the more brutal when one considers its extraordinary capacity to feel, connect, and to translate the lightest touch into myriads of emotions.

While I want to say that war is unnatural, the fact that humans have been fighting one another throughout history suggests otherwise. It should be noted, however, that almost all wars have ultimately been driven by competition over resources. Yet today, for the first time in human history, we possess the means—or at the very least the potential—to overcome many of those material constraints.

Love, above all, is the most natural feeling and perhaps the most powerful of driving forces. Nor is it confined to humankind. I think of the chimpanzee mothers carrying their dead infants for months after their passing. I think of albatrosses, which mate for life and strengthen their bonds through elaborate dances. And I think of my favourite example: penguins, which survive only through cooperation and communal living. Their mating rituals are also interesting: the male carefully selects the finest pebble he can find and offers it to his chosen mate; if she accepts, their bond is formed. Together they share responsibilities and endure extraordinary hardships in order to hatch and raise their young in one of the harshest environments on earth.

We also witness examples of interspecies empathy, if not outright altruism. Dolphins have been known to protect humans from sharks, while humpback whales sometimes intervene to defend other species from orca attacks. Even horses have been observed forming circles around mothers of different species during and immediately after labour, shielding both them and their newborns from predators.

I mention all of the above to establish that love, empathy, and altruism are a fact of life on earth. Given the right conditions, these emotions—and the behaviours associated with them—can be strengthened and nurtured. They balance the negative tendencies we tend to associate with humanity, including the impulse towards violence and war.

Conditions matter because they shape the behaviours we exhibit. Marx famously wrote about a society that has moved beyond competition for resources and the artificial scarcity created by capitalism. Today, more than ever, we possess the technological capacity—or at least the potential—to ensure that all people can live dignified lives. More importantly, we have the means to free human time and energy for pursuits beyond mere economic competition, towards meaningful relationships, intellectual pursuits, creativity and other fulfilling activities.

I am diverging. I suppose what I am trying to say is that, given the right conditions, humans can lead lives (and consequently organise their societies) around love, empathy and altruism. Relations and societies where, to return to my original theme, love is the manifestly obvious motivation, and war seems as absurd to everyone as it seems to me.

I return to the thought that prompted this lengthy entry. I return to the central question. How utterly incomprehensible is it that bodies capable of experiencing internal fireworks at the mere hint of a touch can nonetheless be violently pierced by spears, arrows, bullets and explosives? The misery generated by this unfathomable aspect of human behaviour is all-encompassing—it destroys everything.

How else are we to think of the father in Gaza who wrote the names of his children on their arms amidst the bombardment, knowing that it might be the only way to identify their bodies? How heartbreaking is it to see children playing together and, rather than pretending to be parents, teachers or doctors, role-playing the carrying of wounded adults on stretchers? How much of this ugliness can we tolerate?

I know the answer. I have seen it in action. Human beings are remarkably resilient, capable of enduring profound trauma, persevering, and rebuilding their lives. I witnessed this in December 2015, at the heights of the refugee crisis in Greece, when I accompanied shipwreck survivors—persons like you and me who had lost their entire families in a single moment—to mainland Greece mere hours after the tragedy had unfolded.

I was humbled by the magnitude of their grief, unable to comprehend how they could ever regain any resemblance of normalcy. Yet they did. Deeply scarred and perhaps forever wounded by the unprecedented traumatic experience, yet able to find a way to continue living, one day at a time.

I am not as courageous as the millions of refugees who endure life-altering hardships yet somehow find a way to move on. I can seldom tolerate current affairs. These past few years have been exceedingly taxing on my mental health, which I try to manage in various ways, one of them being to limit my exposure to the news, while actively seeking out experiences and emotions that remind me of the good in humanity.

Twenty years ago, Achilles, Hector and Prince Andrei marching into battle excited me and resonated with my understanding of patriotism. At forty, I find myself drawn instead to Hector and Ajax exchanging gifts, exposing the irrationality of war; to Andrei gazing at the clouds above Austerlitz as his faith in honour and glory collapses; and Kostoulas enduring the savagery of the trenches, sustained only by his love for his fiancé. The protagonists—the heroes—are largely the same, but what I admire in them has changed completely, just as I have changed as a reader and as a person over the last twenty years.

Twenty years ago, I saw war through the lens of youth. Today, I also see it through my son and daughter, which is perhaps the greatest transformation that comes with parenthood. Images of dead, orphaned, dismembered or disfigured children now carry an immediacy that lacked during my early years of adulthood. I no longer identify with the soldier marching on to battle; instead, I see myself in the father trying to shelter his children from the horrors of war. Such was my shock when, years after the death of Alan Kurdi, I found myself staring at my son asleep in blue shorts and a red t-shirt against blue sheets.

Perhaps more than anything else, that is what turning forty signifies for me: maintaining my faith in humanity despite everything that is happening around us, and gaining a clearer sense of what is worth protecting. I no longer admire those willing to sacrifice themselves for war. At forty, I idolise those who choose life, love and tenderness despite the bleakness of current affairs.