Natural disasters really put me in a terrible mood…. not to be selfish or anything.
The feelings of helplessness are overwhelming. Send money. Donate goods. Do anything. Pray. Think. And then I turn around and go back to my life… waiting for the weather to improve, plans for the new baby, what will we make for dinner tonight… While others are desperately attempting to piece their lives back together. There’s just something so nonadhesive about this part of humanity which makes me wish that there was a way to help more — and really feel like I’m helping rather than sitting back and watching others really help.
And of course there is the media egg — once cracked that sends us all scrambling… OMG, Japan — WHO DO WE KNOW THERE? OMG, Okay — They are okay. OMG, HAWAII… WHO DO WE KNOW THERE? OMG, Okay, thanks to Facebook, we know they are alright. OMG – THE WEST COAST… As we hold our breath, waiting for the water to recede, wave and then slam into the land masses that are so far away from our lives that they may as well be on the moon. THE MOON, OMG. THE EARTH — WHO DO WE KNOW THERE?!? Did they say they were EVACUATING MEXICO? And then the catastrophic likely hood that this natural wave comes full circle… to not only point fingers toward the, ahem, MAN MADE — but also to the elimination of such via RADIOACTIVE MELTDOWN. I’d like a little naturally grown sugarcane with my pseudoscience, please.
Just turn the TV off. The radio. The computers. The iPad. The Blackberry. The iphone. And, for the love of Gawd, if you pick up the paper — skip to the IGNORANCE IS BLISS section. And just in case you haven’t felt normal since Friday either — blame the axis, of which the Earth is now OFF.
But this is life… Right? The Earth rolling around, off of its axis like some random SPACEBALL. Just as we calm down from OMG – EGYPT, WHO DO WE KNOW THERE? Wasn’t so-in-such’s stepson teaching English there for a semester? And what about the neighbor’s daughter — she’s in Turkey — WHAT’S GOING ON THERE?!?! And back to to the norm of OMG – THE 3 YEAR OLD PEE’D ON THE FLOOR. Flip flopping from horror stories of local bus crashes to OH THANK HEAVENS… Sid the Science Kid is on in ten minutes… and back again, trying to even out the guilt — Thousands are dead, but thank goodness Japan was diligent in preparedness…
But really.
The feelings of helplessness are overwhelming. Send money. Donate goods. Do anything. Pray. Think. And then I turn around and go back to my life…
Happy New Year!
