The previously scheduled
blog has been pre-empted.

How do we stay awake in a numbing world?

I had planned this week to offer you a poem about the mysterious way we get what we really need from people, even though we often can’t see that until much later.

But that was before a catastrophe devastated hundreds of thousands of lives in Japan and much of it was piped into my living-space, live and in hi-definition.  I watched with a sympathetic, yet almost voyeuristic fascination, as whole towns were swept away before the camera’s eyes, undeniably glad I could watch from the safety of my desk chair.  But nonetheless, I felt my heart race, hoping and praying that those speeding cars and running people made the salvation of higher ground, like they do in Hollywood movies. Yet here, I knew, for a great many, there was no happy ending.

Through all the years of human history there has been misfortune and suffering, yet until recently, few were exposed to much outside their own village.  Tragedies or violent happenings in that small sphere did not happen often.  Our nervous systems evolved to manage these rare assaults, with the help of our families and tribe.

Even today, it is still rare that such things happen nearby or to those in our inner sphere.  What is different today is that technology efficiently distills the tragedies of six billion people worldwide down to the most tragic, the most heart-rending, the most fear-evoking available by news deadline, and presents it to us real-time, in color, or by replay in our otherwise peaceful living-spaces…often at meal-time.

Can we handle this onslaught without going numb?

I went to the hot tub at my club last night.  There was a talkative 20-something there making conversation with another.  As I was arriving he was saying, “It’s so cool how marketers, like Pepsi, for instance, can do things that make people think they want to buy a Pepsi and go buy it whether they really want a Pepsi or not!  That’s what I want to learn to do.”

I said not a word, but I thought, “this is unconsciousness.”  And I thought of the phrase “fiddling while Rome burned”, which has long epitomized the notion of being completely oblivious in the face of catastrophe and the suffering of others.

But do I have the answer?  Short of volunteering for disaster relief or giving lots of money, neither of which are possible for me right now, there is little I can do to make a difference.  I suspect many of you feel similarly.

I know many are choosing to limit their exposure to such news.  That’s a choice I respect, and yet find that I cannot make for myself.  Our great world has miraculously become quite small.  It is my world.  I want to know.

Yet I also wish to remain sane, not obliviously “fiddling while Rome burns”, but also not pacing the floor anxiously, helplessly traumatized by viewing the trauma of others 10,000 miles distant, or suffering survivor’s guilt because I am not suffering like those I see on the internet.

What about the moments of reverent silence, the occasional tear shed while watching those poor souls run…the candle lit…the prayer said?  Do these count for anything at all in the face of such overwhelming disaster and suffering?

I do not know if such actions soften the Earth’s tectonic tensions or change the trajectory of anyone’s life story…whether fuel rods are thus cooled or buried souls found alive as a result.  I hope they do, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe, as some cynics say, “that and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee”.

I do know that these things help me keep my heart open.  They help me know that I still care, even if I am helpless and overwhelmed.  And maybe…knowing that I care, I can still find it in my heart to help someone in my own “village”. It’s not only people in Japan who are suffering.