---
title: "Growing up during war and chaos: how a generation learned to live on the edge"
description: "A personal reflection on growing up in Sri Lanka during war, the 2004 tsunami, and the resilience and compassion those experiences shaped."
date: "2025-05-16"
updated: "2026-05-14"
type: essay
topics:
  - "Notes & Experiments"
canonical: "https://dalugoda.com/writing/growing-up-during-war-and-chaos"
sources:
  - "https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/growing-up-during-war-chaos-how-generation-learned-live-dalugoda-cu5rc/"
---

I wasn’t on the frontlines. I didn’t grow up in an active war zone. But, like many people who grew up in Sri Lanka during the civil war, I lived in a country where death was always too close.

A bus bomb or an explosion in a crowded street could take your life on an ordinary day.

## You didn’t have to be in a conflict area to feel the fear

We were all living under that shadow. We watched the news with our hearts in our throats, waiting for names, cities, and faces we might recognise. We checked on loved ones and wondered whether taking a different road or leaving five minutes later might have saved a life.

Then, just when we thought we had seen enough, the 2004 tsunami came.

That day is seared into all of us. It was a natural disaster that tore through the country and took thousands of lives, homes, and entire communities in minutes. It was a different kind of trauma, but it layered itself on top of everything else.

So when people ask me why I approach life the way I do, the answer is simple:

> I grew up not expecting a tomorrow.

It taught me urgency. It taught me gratitude. And it taught me that, if I’m alive today, it is already a win. I learned to manage stress differently, not because I’m better at it, but because I’ve known worse.

Deadlines, business pressure, and uncertainty: it is all relative when you have grown up under that kind of weight. You learn to be calm in a storm because, for a long time, you lived in one.

## The part that is harder to admit

Growing up surrounded by such profound loss has, at times, dulled my sense of empathy. When you have seen so much (so many funerals and so many tears), you can start to become numb. You can lose patience with what feels like a “smaller” problem.

A rough day at work. A relationship difficulty. A missed opportunity. You catch yourself thinking: *Come on, it’s not life or death.* But for someone else, it might feel as though it is.

That is the part I have been working on softening: learning to make space for emotions that do not fit my personal scale of trauma. Leadership, partnership, and friendship all require empathy. Real empathy means seeing pain, even when it is different from your own.

I know I’m not the only one who feels like this. To everyone who grew up in Sri Lanka during those years (the war, the tsunami, and the instability), I imagine you carry some of the same emotional layers:

the strength, the calm under fire, the quiet scars, and the constant sense that life is fragile.

So live fast and love harder. Maybe, like me, you are still learning to soften: to lead with your story without letting it close your heart.

### Our past gave us resilience; now it is up to us to pair it with compassion

## Sources and attribution

- [Original publication on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/growing-up-during-war-chaos-how-generation-learned-live-dalugoda-cu5rc/) (original publication date: 2025-05-16)