Mindfulness, Perspective, and Prayers for Nepal

I was skimming my Facebook feed when I first saw the news about the Nepal Earthquake.  The title of the article had a glaring number that showed how many were already known to be dead and there was a picture with buildings toppled and smashed to rubble.  I saw it, barely glanced at it, shook my head in a quick show of aversion, and kept scrolling through my feed to see other things, mostly miscellaneous internet cat photos and links to pointless Buzzfeed articles.

Article about the April 2014 Nepal Earthquake
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/asia/nepal-earthquake/

At first, I wasn’t sure why I chose to so coldly separate myself from truly acknowledging the horror of the situation in that moment.  Maybe it was because I didn’t think I could handle reflecting on such heartbreaking news at the time so I just compartmentalized. It is possible I was feeling some denial.  It might be that I was simply desensitized to the horror from the constant slew of “fact” and “fiction” that humans shift through constantly on social networks, television, and other media outlets.

Regardless, it took me at least 24 hours to have an honest emotional response regarding the crisis.  What really brought me to that reaction were facts about the earthquake that hit closer to home. First, I remembered that an old roommate of mine from college was actually traveling in Nepal during the quake.  Later I learned that two coworkers have immediate family in parts of India and Nepal that were directly affected by the natural disaster.  Incredibly, everyone I knew from those connections escaped the incident without serious harm, but the fact still remains that hundreds of children were orphaned, thousands of people became homeless, and even those that survived could barely stop for breath before the fear of earthquake aftershocks set in. Eight million people have been affected by the disaster, but for me, it didn’t sink in until I saw it affecting those people in my immediate circle. 

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Eight million people.  Sometimes, hard facts like numbers don’t really help me understand true magnitude.  It’s just a number—a grouping of symbols.  The weight of that number seems distant when written on a page—it’s just an eight and some zeros.  I have to stop, think, put it into perspective. Eight million people is the equivalent of the number of facebook friends I have multiplied by more than 12,139.  If you took the population of Idaho, the State I grew up in, you would need almost 5 more Idahos to make eight million people. Eight million people all worried, scared, and hurting. Eight million tears.

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The truth is, even with those earth-shattering facts, Nepal still feels pretty far away from my cushy American life.  I have moments where my heart aches thinking about it, and moments when the distance between myself and that place could just as easily be the distance to another galaxy.

I can understand why someone might continuously choose to have their conscious remain on the outskirts of horrifying news like a natural disaster that has killed more than 5,500 people.  I myself am a big believer in cutting out unneeded stress from your life, and for some people dealing with the emotional or political aspects of such a tragedy might be especially overwhelming or draining.

But then there is the other part of me, the part that thinks that we have a responsibility as human beings to share in some compassion for the entire human experience.  We get so sucked up into our tiny lives- the mortgage, a misunderstood email at work, the milk that just spilled on the carpet- that we start to think that the whole world is only ourselves and our limited experiences.  We read our news and follow our twitter feed and we think that we have a concept of the world, but we are still separated from it; instead sometimes the gathering of information can become like notches on our belts rather than meaningful connections to the world.  It is an action rooted in selfishness. For me, the earthquake’s horrors weren’t “real” until people who lived in my bubble were affected, but for those eight million people, it was real from the start.

In the end, there is no perfect answer to how humans “should” feel or react in this circumstance.  Like everything it is usually more about the balance—the dance between distance and compassion, self-preservation or species-preservation. How did you react?  Are you emotionally invested or distanced? Do you follow the latest news, or do you avoid it? 

No matter which side you tend to lean towards, I believe that the things that matter are mindfulness, perspective, and coming to the realization that no matter what, it can never hurt to say a prayer, send good vibes, or make a donation in support of Nepal.