Traveling always broadens my world view, or perhaps just reminds me of how BIG this world is that we live in. Traveling here, meeting different people, and witnessing the vast array of cultures that blend together here in Hawaii has me mindful of how small I am in the grand scheme of things, how many people and cultures and languages there are in this world. So many people, so many ways of doing life, so many world views that are different from my own. Stepping out of my regular routine and surroundings always seems to drive this truth home for me. It's a big, vast world out there, and I am only one small person in it.
And it's not just being here in Hawaii. I've been glued to the news over the past 36 hours, watching the devastation that's happened in Japan. Millions of lives there will be forever impacted by this tragedy. Millions.
Sometimes when we travel to new places it's easy to focus on the differences that separate us...different skin color, language, culture, customs, and belief systems. But as I watch the tragedy in Japan on the news, all I can think of is how similar we are. We all need oxygen, water, food, and shelter to survive. We all need love and nurturing to grow and develop. We all NEED. We all have dreams and longings. And a catastrophe of this level reminds me of this. What would it look like if something of this magnitude struck us in the US?
A few weeks ago I remember driving down interstate 680 in California, watching all of the other cars pass us. It suddenly struck me that those weren't just cars passing, but cars full of people, people who have their own lives, their own stories, stories that are as complex and intricate as yours and mine. Sometimes it's easier to just look at all the people in the world and assume they aren't this complex, this human. It's easier to dehumanize people--it makes life a little less painful and complicated when we think of others as different or somehow less significant than ourselves. I don't know that we intentionally do this--I think it's a way we try to cope with the magnitude of grief in this life. It's easier to watch people suffer if they aren't like us, right?
Two nights ago we were woken up by sirens and loud pounding on our front door at around 12am. We were told to leave our room as quickly as possible and make way for higher ground. The tsunami waves were due to hit Hawaii in a couple of hours. We packed up a "survival" bag of food, water, and clothes, unsure of how long we've be without our things, or if we'd ever see them again. I'll tell the story in more detail later, but as we left our room the other night and joined the hundreds of other people who'd been evacuated, all I could think about is how similar, how fragile, and how human we all are.
When we are separated from all the things in our lives that we use to define us--our homes, cars, jobs, language, culture, religion, clothing, etc--we see how similar we all are at the core. I think that when these barriers are broken down--when we see others as not so different from ourselves--our hearts are more likely to be impacted by the magnitude of suffering in the world and we are more likely to be moved into action on others behalf.
No comments:
Post a Comment