I'm too cynical (73% of them are made up) and too desensitized, especially when they're about people dying.
I hate confronting statistics about people dying because I am completely numb and helpless, and then I get upset at myself for not caring and being complacent or offering a ho-hum, "Man, that sucks, doesn't it?"
Even worse is when I am confronted with a statistic of people dying with a superimposed picture of a young child because I know that face is more than a statistic, but I can't really feel anything. I don't feel a connection; I'm not compassionate enough, I don't desire to "suffer with" people I don't know and will never meet and more often than not, write off as people I can't help.
So I was unmoved again, when I came across this statistic:
Every 3 seconds, a child dies because he or she was hungry.
Just typing that, I feel nothing.
But I'm not satisfied moving on from that.
I'm not ok moving on with my day knowing that in the span of typing this post hundreds of people have died as I much on my nighttime snack.
I'm not ok with living as if I didn't read that.
I want it to unsettle me, to break my heart. Atleast I think I do.
I started thinking of what this would look like in my life, and with a little calculator action, these are the results:
- the population at my state university would be dead in a little over 8 hours
- people at my church would die in 50 minutes
- every single one of my facebook friends would die in 26 minutes
- my campus fellowship group would die in 3 minutes
- my twenty closest friends would die in a single minute
- my family would be dead in 12 seconds
Punch in your own numbers.
Be uncomfortable.
u practically took the words right out of my mouth. tho, with better writing and research.
ReplyDeletethis situation, both the deaths and my reaction, has been at the back of my mind for a while now. But sometime this week, I connected a line from a song I've been listening to with my thoughts and feelings about this. The line is "If it doesn't break your heart it isn't love" ("Yet" on Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot). I made the connection because I realized the situation doesn't break my heart; I don't really love those children. i need a softer heart, and being unsettled might be the first step.