In my last posting I said that it was impossible to ignore human suffering on the scale that is occurring in Haiti. I still believe that to be true. However, it is all too easy, I’m afraid, to become inured to it.
You can see it happening. Ten days later other stories and events are eclipsing the historic calamity of the earthquake…a political upset in Massachusetts by a relatively unknown state senator who—gasp!—once posed nude for a women’s magazine; the fate of health care legislation; a photo purporting to show Tiger Woods at a sexual addiction rehab; two great NFL championship matchups on tap for Sunday.
Slowly but surely the stories from Haiti are pushed further back in the TV news lineups and off the front pages as our lives, at least, return to normal. Every once in a while there is a miraculous rescue or some other properly dramatic event that gets played up, a kind of a media aftershock.
I guess it’s only natural. How much footage of rubble and tent cities can a person see without it all blurring into a kind of tragic still life? The world moves on; it can’t help itself. I wonder how long it took the Romans in 79 A.D. to stop talking about the molten destruction of Pompeii and return to their gossip and political intrigue and wondering who was doing battle at the Coliseum that weekend. Probably not long.
Humans have short attention spans, I suppose, a kind of defense mechanism that protects us from being trapped in fear or overwhelmed by pity. We distance ourselves from the intensity of tragedy.
Yet for the people of Haiti there is no distance. Their suffering does not diminish because we pay less attention to it, a lesson I hope we learned from Katrina. It is now that the real work begins, the long hard struggle back from disaster. The numbers almost defy comprehension: 200,000 dead and two million homeless in a country where the average annual income is $400 (yes, four hundred dollars) and life expectancy is 53…and that was before the quake.
So as the reporters and news anchors withdraw and move on the next big thing, the relief workers and other professionals move in, led by the U.S. military. In effect we now have a third front after Iraq and Afghanistan, though this is a war against time. The enemy is starvation and homelessness and despair. And it will be as challenging for our troops as any crisis they have faced.
GUIDEPOSTS, though a non-profit company with an outreach division, does not really do disaster relief per se. But one way we can help is by helping the helpers with magazines, books and pamphlets. We are especially good at getting these inspirational materials to military chaplains. If you would like to support us in this activity, go to the Guideposts Foundation website and learn more about our programs. And don’t forget to visit OurPrayer.org. Because prayer is the greatest relief effort of all.
Post a prayer for the victims and their loved ones and find out how you can help with disaster relief through these organizations.
Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.
