Midsensitized

That is, instead of desensitized, I'm thinking about how I am probably midsensitized to the violence of the world. For those of us who read the headlines of the day, how can you stand it? When you read the blurb about people who were killed in Pakistan, or some other place outside your time zone and country of origin, do you cry? Do you shake your head in sadness or disgust? Do you do anything at all? Or are you like me and try to avoid reading those particular articles in depth? Do you wonder what you can do to stop the killing and the violence or do you wonder what, if anything, it has to do with you?

Being super exposed to all the violence in the world has done something to me. It's not that I don't care. It's not that I don't think those people are important because I do. Just because I don't know their names, does not mean that some one's beloved wife did not just get shot in the midsection and is bleeding to death. That some one's son and only child is not obliterated by a car bomb that prevented his mother from burying him intact. But how can I mourn for all those people who are a victim of violence and war everyday and still live in the now of my own life? Is reading the headlines enough? Is cringing from them enough?

I don't know that getting all of the latest news, via satellite, web-enabled phone and the plain old Internet is the only factor contributing to my absolute lack of anguish about the killing, torture and ill-positions of innocents (or at least, non-parties to the dispute that got them killed). I think it's the shear volume of it. If we really took the time to think about how many babies are starving as we go to fast food joints and how many young fathers barely escaped with their lives after going to market that one fateful day, I think we would collapse with the weight of it. There's just too much negative and gritty stuff going on. Our fragile minds can't take it.

So what do some of us do to cope? Scan the headlines. Think briefly on the personal affect of the tragedy. Avoid reading the whole article to avoid the hurt. Because for every action, there is a reaction. And as hard as it is to stomach, sometimes bad things have to happen for good things to blossom. Here's hoping the rest of your day is free of violence and negativity. What are you going to do with it?