NPR had an essay (what do you call it when it's viva voce instead of in print?)
yesterday from a woman who is feeling ground down by the tragedy in the news everyday: she sees a happy little girl crossing the street, with her dog and her dad, and thinks of how many little girls aren't able to cross the street safely,
or wear pretty dresses, or get enough to eat because their countries are
undergoing war, pestilence, or famine. Every day on the news she hears about more deaths in Iraq. She doesn't want to grow calloused but can't deal with all the world's sorrows either.
I don't want to grow calloused either. One of the things I love about NPR is that every week or so they go talk to the friends and family of a solider killed in action, which helps me remember that these are all people, with lives and personalities and dreams, not a faceless list of names. I start dripping tears much more often than I'd like on my daily commute, listening to reports of more hatred popping up in the West Bank or another powermonger getting away with something the average person would be imprisoned for or someone else dying just from being in the href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/ghostbanner.html">wrong place and time.
It's a dilemma built in to all the advantages that come with better news of the world, though it's not particularly new any more; the same thing must have happened to those who read the lists and lists of dead and wounded in the newspapers after Verdun as much as to those watching children burning in napalm at Khe Sanh.
I think the answer is in remembering the things that balance out the sorrows. Yes, there are little girls who can't have dogs because every one in their village is so hungry that all the dogs have long since been eaten. There are little girls who can't cross the street because there are land mines under the street. But there is also this little girl, right here, and she is giggling and chattering and skipping and she has every chance of getting to grow up safely and have little girls of her own, and there are many, many little girls like her. There are trees in bloom in Mechaieh's yard and there are trees in bud in Melissa's woods and there will be wildflowers along the road on my way home. There is spring in the world, and I get to be here to see and breathe it. There are happy babies in the world and two of them will be at my house for a late/early Seder this weekend. I may not like some of what's going on in my country just now but I also know we have a chance to change it all this year. There are people living the lives they want to live and loving the people they want to love and quite a lot of them talk about it online every day where I can read it and share a bit in their happiness.
Not that that's license to rest easy, because there are wars and tragedies and violence and hatred and any of that is too much -- but how can you keep going unless you see the beauty of it all too?
I like what Mechaieh says
href="http://mechaieh.diaryland.com/040704.html">today about grace because her words seem to me to touch on the wild joy I have to believe is at the heart of the universe, and I hope she won't mind my
quoting:
Sometimes I find myself ridiculously near tears as I try to accept that I will not always be around to savor all this - and simultaneously wildly joyful and grateful, for I'm invariably and inevitably reminded that my being here at all seems to me such a tangle of accident, coincidence and deliberate design. Such sweetness each season - oh, abiding and abundant grace.
When friends rejoice both far and near / How can I keep from singing?
Special bonus today: when I went looking for this entry to link to
above, I found that it had somehow gotten in my private folder (where I never put anything). So there you have a Dichroic poem that is four months old, but has never been seen in public until now. I don't think it sucks, except for maybe a few awkward spots.