I remember when the United States entered the first Gulf War in January of 1991. I was just pulling into my apartment complex in Iowa City after having been home to celebrate Mom and Dad's 44th wedding anniversary when I heard the announcement on the radio. For the next week, I watched the live, television broadcasts directly from Baghdad that showed the lights and sounds of the bombings. The reporters were literally hanging the cameras and microphones out the hotel windows to bring the action directly to my living room. It was this realness and nearness that made me join protest rallies and anti-war marches and wear black armbands. I had to get personally involved for fear that I would become desensitized to the war, and it would become just something that was happening somewhere.
Two weeks ago I was watching the live, underwater camera footage of the oil spill in the Gulf, but after a week it became mundane. I agree this is a horrific situation, but I feel helpless to do anything in a place thousands of miles away from me. Two summers ago when the F5 tornado swept through Parkersburg, a town four miles from my hometown, so I went back to help. This disaster hit a little closer to home, yet I was still removed from it b/c I could return to my home w/ solid walls and to my yard w/ tall trees. I've sent sympathy cards when friends and colleagues lost family members. That's what all these situations had in common; I could sympathize but never empathize. Now, being a recipient of those sympathy cards I can better empathize w/ the initial, overwhelming sadness followed by the numbness and then the shock and some more numbness then a little anger and then some more disbelief.
We should never become immune and desensitized to other's pain and suffering b/c one day it will be ours. Countless times in my life have I said, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." I have to remember that I could easily be the one who's home is being bombed by someone claiming to save me or destroyed by a natural disaster. Soldiers and health care providers disassociate w/ the enemy and the patient b/c otherwise they couldn't cope w/ the daily dangers and stress and illness and loss of life. Giving the enemy cruel nicknames like Krauts and Japs and Gooks, or not even giving them a name, but only referring to them as "the patient," dehumanizes them and desensitizes the soldier and the doctor to what he or she must do. But if they traded their disassociation for compassion, we might have no need for war and find more cures for sickness. The soldier will someday die, and the doctor will someday become ill. Rather than fearing personal involvement, they should embrace it or run the risk of desensitization.
Writing in this blog each day keeps me in touch w/ my grief and my loss, which in turns keeps me sensitive to not only my feelings but to the feelings of others. Well, maybe not all others. There are some women in this town that I have to disassociate w/ otherwise I'll rip their heads off, but that's another story for another day.
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