Posted by Racer on July 13, 2005, at 17:01:21
In reply to rambling... (contains triggers - could be graphic), posted by Nikkit2 on July 13, 2005, at 11:08:15
I think I can empathize with you, Nikki. I felt something similar after our earthquake in 1989, although not nearly as bad, I don't think. Somehow, it seems worse to me that *humans* did this to other humans, you know?
Last night, I was watching something on our public television station about the school hostage thing last year in Beslan. It's so easy to allow yourself to understand it only from the headlines, or in theory, or like on a TV program -- and so drattedly difficult to take it in in human terms. The documentary last night almost *forced* it to be seen and felt and understood in human terms. They interviewed people who had been hostages. One mother was talking about what happened right before her young son, her only child, died of heart failure from heat and dehydration. How could anyone NOT feel for her pain?
I think it's easier to look at these things as "big pictures", because seeing them as they really are, as a collection of individual lives, is so painful.
Funny, I was kinda thinking about this while I watched that documentary last night. You know what really struck me the hardest, and gave me the biggest perspective change? It was watching the local men running to the windows of the school, as the terrorists were in a shooting match with those outside, to carry the women and children from the school. These men were literally risking their lives, they were rescuing people they may not even have known, they weren't stopping for anything, they looked terrified -- and they ran back in there as soon as they dropped off each person they rescued. Watching that, I have hope for our species. We still have heroes among us.
I'm going to hold on to that thought. We still have, for all the bad, some good. We still have heroes, and they walk among us, unrecognized, every day.
poster:Racer
thread:527110
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050708/msgs/527217.html