What's that old saying? Five people killed in your neighbourhood is a tragedy; twenty-two thousand killed halfway around the world is a statistic.
Well, I guess I already am halfway around the world, and there were a heck of a lot of people killed right next door in Thailand, making it seem very unstatistic-like.
Events like this are too much to process -- the biggest earthquake in forty years, tectonic plates shifting, tens of thousands dead. Thousands more homeless. A grandson of the king of Thailand swept away on a jetski, while an Australian tourist loses his grip on his newborn as the waves fall down.
The brain can't handle that much tragedy at once. What are you supposed to do, and how are you supposed to take it all in? You can change the channel or put down the paper or surf to another website. There are worldwide tragedies all the time, of course, and this is but another one. Turn the page and disengage, as Rush once said. (The Canadian rock group, not the American commentator.)
(Oh, but how reckless and cruel we feel for doing that, don't we? I'm glad it's not me runs through your head and your heart, and you hate yourself for thinking it and feeling it, but it's there, and where does it come from, that selfish, instinctive gratefulness? That greedy thirst for life that allows us to feel for others misery but relish our own sanctuary? Does it makes us more or less human, this proper but craven desire?)
The strange thing about this is one is the indifferent naturalness of it. Terrorists you can almost understand. (Not condone; understand.) Meaning, angry, screwed-up people lashing out -- that's something that has an identifiable human texture and resolve. There are human motivations and psychological undercurrents you can analyze and dissect, poke and prope.
Here, there were only currents, period, unstoppable waves of force that went on and on and on for six kilometres at a stretch. A quake so powerful that it disturbed the earth's rotation.
Who do you get angry at? The weatherman for not predicting this development? The scientists for underestimating tsunamis? The earth for not being more, I don't know, sturdy?
I don't know. If you believe in God, these are the times when you wonder if He has a sick sense of humor or what. If you don't believe in him, you have little solace and even less comfort.
Random, consuming waves and quakes. Children tossed aside and flung away. The same old story of death and destruction, intensified to a horrifying degree.
Soon -- in a week, maybe two -- the story will die down, perhaps quietly, fading away from page one to seven to eight. Maybe another husband will kill his pretty and pregnant wife, and the media will find something else more sexy and racy and lurid to latch onto. In the real world, the sun will still set, the tide recede, the stars emerge. Everything will revert to what's considered normal.
This almost unspeakable human, personal tragedy will regress to a flat, emotionless statistic, or an indifferent afterthought, a 'remember-that-earthquake-last-year?' anecdote to be told sometime next Christmas, after the turkey, before the cake.
We can't be too hard on ourselves, I guess. It's natural (whether we like it or not) to grieve from a distance, and even more natural to move on, live life, look ahead. After all, there's only so much we are willing to hold on to. Only so much each of us can allow in.
What luxuries we have! To be able to move on, look ahead, turn away...
