Dancing While the World Burns

I had to turn off the radio. I was listening to NPR as usual while making dinner. It was All Things Considered. It was Syrian “peace talks” and Egyptian devolution. An hour earlier, the TED Radio Hour was all about technology and how quickly our lives can be hijacked now that we rely so heavily on it. Not only that, but the terrorists are even more adept at using it than we are, and it helps them kill more people all the time, with more precision. I felt sick, so I switched over to First Wave on the XM radio and listened to the music I loved in college – REM, Cure, The Smiths… I danced as I sautéed, instead of crying.

 

How much of the world’s news is enough to know, and how much can I get away with not knowing? As it is, I never feel like I know enough. Bruce will come in with, “Did you hear…?” And of course I won’t have heard. I know I’m supposed to read the NY Times and the Daily Beast and countless other publications. I do listen to NPR a lot because I can listen and do other things at the same time. Shamefully, though, I don’t seek out any other news sources. I can’t read and accomplish things at the same time, plus I hate being on the computer. Mostly I feel like I just can’t spare the time to keep up with it all when my everyday life is more pressing. And then there’s the fact that I just want to not know, even though I know I should know.

 

I’m a hypocrite. I berate my students for not knowing anything that’s going on in the world. Oh, are there wars happening? Oil spills? Earthquakes? Ships sinking? And yet I too want to shut my eyes and ears. I want to walk outside under the glittering winter stars and feel microscopic flakes of snow hit my cheeks. I want to skate and ski and play card games with Cedar and Bruce. I want to meditate and exercise and cuddle with the cats. In addition, I need to plan and teach classes, serve on committees and boards, cook, clean, eat, sleep, etc. How am I supposed to keep up? Should news be a priority? Is it cheating, even sinful in some way, to block out the evil, the painful and horrifying?

 

What if it came here, I think? What if I were that Syrian mother with her child wrapped in her arms? Wouldn’t I want to know that out there in the world some other mother was feeling it with me, maybe even trying to help? But it’s the help part that’s the problem. I don’t see how I can help. And if I can’t help, then I would rather not know.

 

I do read our local paper because it is small and manageable and I can find out which of my students were arrested, whose relatives died or had babies, and what big things are happening in our small town. I would much rather focus on the two new hotel projects, controversial as one of them is (because it will be five stories tall and block people’s view of the lake), than try to get my mind around all the deaths in the Middle East.

 

One death is comprehensible. A hundred thousand deaths are not. Recently an Australian soldier came to our small town, stayed one night in a hotel (long enough to send an email to his father, bequeathing his personal possessions) and then climbed a mountain, went to sleep under a blanket out in the open, and died of hypothermia. On purpose. He had served in Afghanistan, another place of death that I can’t get my mind around. This soldier came back from there and felt he needed to die, so he came here to do it. No one knows why. But his odd story and his handsome face captured our imaginations. Many local people searched for him in bitter, below-zero cold. When they found him they treated his body with honor and sent it back to Australia. Almost every day in the last few weeks I’ve seen his picture in the paper and cried. Even though I don’t truly understand his actions, I can get my mind around him. His story is small enough and close enough to home.

 

I have heard many times about street people, homeless, who get change handed to them blindly by people trying not to see them, and who are so grateful when people do see, when they are seen as people, even by those who can’t help. So perhaps we do have to look, even when we can’t do anything. We have to at least see what is happening. It isn’t enough, but it is something.

 

I don’t have television, and I still don’t have time to read, but I will continue to listen to as much as I can handle. When I hit my limit, though, I will change the radio station and dance, because if no one is dancing, then we are wasting the blessing of not being in Syria or Afghanistan, and that doesn’t do anyone any good.