When last week’s earthquake shook the foundation of the small island of Haiti, I didn’t expect the after-shock to hit me so hard. The tremors of a nation of strangers in need somehow made their way into my heart, in my home in small town Ontario.
I felt off kilter, useless to affect change, and guilty for luxury of the life I live as days pass on. I did my best to ignore media reports of the devastation, images of death and destruction. Best I not know, I decided. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, I reasoned. I purposely choose not to bear witness to the reality.
Despite my attempts to shield myself, the news reports filtered into my imagination from radios in cars, stores and offices that I visited. The images were plastered on front pages in the newspaper boxes on every corner. Television, my late-night guilty pleasure, flashed scrolling headlines across the screen with the updated confirmation counts of the dead. Not knowing suddenly made no sense. Ignoring the world doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. It doesn’t make me any less helpless.
Tragedies like this hold a mirror to our lives. What if I lost my entire town in a day? What if my children were lost in the mayhem and I had no idea where they were, how they were or if they were alive? Imagine if night fell and you were afraid and suddenly homeless, without word of your loved ones. Lost.
All of sudden, the line-up at the drive-through makes you realize how spoiled you are. Living in a country where our children make more on average in a day through their allowance than an entire family in Haiti does in a week, makes you question your child’s desperate need for a new video game, or that Blackberry device you can’t leave home without. When you wake up in a country where medical coverage, public education and social assistance are individual rights, you look to a land like Haiti and realize what we take for granted.
It seems millions of Canadians felt the same way. My faith in humanity was restored as everywhere I went I heard great stories of people making a difference, from my neighbourhood to my friends coast to coast. Corporations, organizations, governments, nations around the globe took action to provide aid. I found positive evidence of humanity everywhere I looked, from my emails, to Facebook and in the media I’d avoided.
I will hold on to one image in the months to come. It was video footage of a young boy, maybe six years old, standing on a table surrounded by a group of children, many of whom were now orphaned and homeless. Covered in dust and tattered clothes, he looked straight into the television camera with wide smiling eyes and he started to perform. He began making funny faces and posing in silly ways, bringing laughter and smiles to his captive audience. The triumph of the human spirit lived in that child’s smile. Despite the devastation, he represented all that is right in the world: love and hope. Giving it and receiving it. His joy was the gift of that moment and he knew enough to embrace it.
Do you know it? It’s a shame how easily we forget love is precious. It’s a miracle how quickly we remember. Love. Hope. Now.