a different perspective
In the midst of my odd introspection over the holidays, I found myself turning outward and becoming strangely preoccupied with the tsunami disaster. I found it incomprehensible. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the numbers. Numbers representing the people lost, numbers representing the money coming in to help, numbers of aid workers, numbers of buildings destroyed – people’s livelihood’s gone. All those numbers made my confusion insurmountable. I was simply too overwhelmed to take in any more numbers. My brain was too full for any more information.
Then I found this blog. The woman who writes it is Canadian, living in Phuket with her husband, days away from having a baby and was already an active blogger. This is her first hand account. And for some reason this simplified it for me. It made it real again. Something I could relate to.
It’s no less horrifying. In some ways it hits me harder than the overwhelming amounts of information I was sifting through before. (I began crying when I followed her links to the local paper’s missing persons board – again so many people that may never be found.) But for whatever reason, she helped me to see it more clearly, with less distance. And that’s how I needed to see it, I think. For some reason, it helped.
