When the homes fall down and the hospitals fall down and the presidential palace falls down, it puts everything in our lives in instant perspective. The earthquake that ripped through Haiti this week has left rubble, dust, blood and tears in its wakes. The call for help has gone out across the globe, though every technology available. Literally, you can now just lift one finger to help by texting 90999 with the message “HAITI” to donate $10 to the Red Cross. It’s so easy, it almost feels like cheating.Celebrities have rallied support, the President has pledged support. Hillary Clinton called the level of devastation “biblical.” I don’t pray to any particular god, but I’ve asked the universe to help those hurt, scared and alone. More than 100,000 souls feared lost, maybe some 3 million more in desperate need.
In times like this when the enormity of the world’s suffering come crashing down around us, I’m reminded why I look to entertainment in the first place. Diversion. Joy. Meaning. Beauty. We can’t always find one, let alone all of them, in the things we consume. But sometimes, if we’re really lucky, the art we enjoy takes us through a rabbit hole of imagination and back again to the other side to make our waking lives more vivid and clear. We can’t ever escape the world’s problems, but maybe we can understand them just a little bit better.
The loss of life, the wounding, the destruction of a city, but also of families and friendships, all of it is unimaginable and entirely real. Some of us will turn to some greater intelligence than ourselves for explanations (and some of us will turn to the Sky Bully for venom--I'm looking at you Pat Robertson). Most of us will at some point look to art, perhaps for distraction, perhaps to find some greater meaning, not in the event itself, but to our humanity. God bless the child, indeed. And perhaps it's that second strategy that is the more important. After all, there is no "meaning" to an earthquake. An earthquake is a fact, an event of nature. The meaning is found in our response, our human actions, some flawed, some magnificent, some like yours today, simply necessary.
ReplyDeleteUnderstand...and help where we're able. Be it financial, spiritual or any other way we can manage.
ReplyDeleteThe whole western world has really come together to help Haiti, and its great, I only wish we could be like this for other things. Living in the Dominican republic, (which usually doesn't have good relations with Haiti in the social aspect) I really see a change in people. this event has made everyone fall off the stool and see what is really going on, I just hope the help continues.
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