Make it Count

When I see their faces full of fear, I do not think of furthering their pain or placing more burdens on their heavy lives. I can see their pain, their shock at the intersection that life has left them haphazardly balanced in and I cannot help but feel responsible for having caused them hardship. Anyone who sees an enemy in their despair is no human with reason, with compassion. These are people that live, breathe, love, and die. They are no different than anyone else that has been given a life. They were once children with hopes and dreams of life after childhood. They ran with smiles on their faces into a life that should be more than what has been given to them.

Those of us who are fortunate to have never experienced first-hand these realities are hard-pressed to understand how people are capable of surviving in such an extreme environment. How can a person deal with such great loss—loss of loved ones, loss of homes, loss of identity, loss of a future? There can be no stronger willed person than one who is capable of regaining his or her life after such tragedy.

We who sit safely from afar and judge from our living rooms cannot understand this strength and determination, this will to rebuild a life after losing so much. We are fed images and not emotions. We see the destruction but do not smell the decay, do not touch the shoulders of those grieving to provide consolation, do not connect the destroyed lives to lives before the ruin. Those images we see are frozen in time, in a perpetual state of ruin and despair. We do not know what living once meant to these images that provide entertainment to an emotion-starved world. We see their tears but only those that shed them can taste them.

With all tragedies such as this, there is a call to senses that eventually stirs enough people into realizing that the falsehood that we live in must change in order to move forward. The time to move forward, to wake up to the unnecessary pain that is all too familiar to these hurt people, has come. We can no longer surround ourselves with leaders that randomly point fingers at people in attempts to justify their own obtrusive behaviors, creating a world full of enemies through their greedy and dynastic plots. There has been enough destruction of values, morals, and lives in the name of all that is supposed to be good.

The next time around, We need to be more careful in who We choose to represent Us. The next time around, We need to be careful in who We choose to be to the world. We have the ability to be kind, to be generous, to be compassionate. We are one of many within a world that does not belong to only the chosen few who lead. This is Our world. This is Our life.

Make it count.