Perspective

Everything is relative, or so they say.

I am not sure that it's always that simple though.

I truly believe that how someone experiences the world has as much to do with their experiences as it relates to what they choose to experience.

Some people see everything around them, they take it in. They internalize it. They can imagine what it might be like to be in the shoes of someone else. They see need and they address it. They help.

Some people, too many people, are capable of just shutting it all away. They can't see the truth, they can't see reality, no matter how urgently it is thrust in their faces.

I see this play out here again, as I've seen it so many other times in so many other circumstances.

It's something that happens everyday.

Some tragedies are small and intimate, personal in scale. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, when I lost the baby, when my father died....it felt a little bit unfair that everyone else carried on as though nothing had happened. My world may have stopped spinning just then, but theirs didn't.

When the tragedies are so small in magnitude, as horrible as they are to endure, there is no reason to ever expect that it could or should affect other people, for the simple fact that it didn't.

When the tragedies occur on a larger scale, though, there should be pause. Or at least it feels that way. It's harder to ignore something that happens to entire neighborhoods. Though this most recent disaster didn't physically alter the landscape on this end of town, though it didn't flood homes and destroy everything on this side, though no one was trapped and alone waiting for help right here, it's still real.

Just a few miles away, all those things happened. They are still happening.

But you can choose not to see it.

And many do.

Too many.

Far too many.

I've learned the hard way though that it's not worth trying to motivate people to care about others when they just don't know how.

I can't waste my time trying to make people care, not right now, not when there is so much else that needs done.

Perspective.

To see it, you first have to be willing to open your eyes.

Are you willing?