Now Pause and Reflect

When that earthquake hit the Ibaraki area the other night the only casualty in my household was a cracked bottle of some old, high-quality whiskey that my FIL gave me right after my wedding. At least only a few drops were lost.

But now on the TV, in the newspapers, and on the internet shocking images and even more shocking news continue to pour out of Sichuan Province in central China. A couple of days ago a massive earthquake ripped across a fault line of unprecedented size. Many thousands of lives lost. Many thousands more unaccounted for and likely buried beneath a wasteland of debris. Countless others homeless, many with serious injuries.

For the first time in what seems like ages there is no mention of the Olympics. No mention of protests. No mention of Tibet. No mention of Darfur. No mention of tainted product scandals. No politics or nationalism. All we see now are human beings who have suffered an unbelievable catastrophe through absolutely no fault of their own.

It's times like this that tend to make one feel totally helpless, not only because we're so absolutely unable to do anything to make things better, but because a disaster like this shows all too plainly how tiny and insignificant we really are.


(Image from cryptome.org.)

Was this really necessary?