The Plight of Humanity Today
The screen stares back at me hauntingly, its blue iridescent light shining mercilessly onto my eyes in the thick darkness of the night. My sight is fixated, while my brain feels as if a train is racing wildly on intertwined metal tracks. I feel drained and exhausted. On the screen, my Facebook feed is spread out and there are people’s faces painted here and there, and advertisements of some sales at local flagships sprawled across the white and blue interior of my computer. There, in the middle, lies the visual that has shredded the fabric of my soul and yet still dares to stare at me with a question imposed. The question that has gripped me today, is as linguistically simple as it is universally unsolvable: What can I do to help?
Looking at the image of the bony child, dressed in rags, while perched timidly on part of a concrete mass of her house reduced to rubble, I find myself remorseful over this oft recurring, abominable puzzle. The headline, highlighted in bold below the picture, boasts about this photographer, who ventured into the pit of a war in the middle east, and came back with pictures like these. The article says, that this kid was sitting mournfully near the edge of a towering mound of metal and bone skeletons of his destroyed home and of his killed family, all piled over each other in a mass of grey ash. The kid had just lost everything that he had ever owned by an air strike by someone that he never knew for reasons he had never known. And so, after crying for help for many hours in a city resounding with way too many cries of humans who wailed over their own loss, the child lost his voice, with his throat parched and dry and so now he sat at the tomb stone of his life and awaited someone to pass him by. This passing photographer, had finally managed to notice this forsaken child, and so he quickly stopped to take a photograph to preserve his questioning eyes at humanity’s strike that only have one expression written bravely across them. One tear jerking question, that has left me befogged and guilty as I had uncovered his plight from the comfort of my home: “How long, before the help of humanity arrives?”
As the world transcended into time, I feel as if that the gap between the realities of people further divided. Today, there are people like you and me, who can go on their entire lives being ignorant and unaffected by the tragedies that come down on the other half of the human herd. It’s so easy to forget the bigger picture, to overlook the flames of the other world that is always burning. The rich and the ones with power are disconnected and isolated from the scale of human tragedies that are unfolding everywhere. Amongst us, many are those who do not know and haven’t yet comprehended just how many ruthless wars and bloodsheds are running rampant today, and then there are those like you and me, who get a whiff of these tragedies through our portals of information, be it the internet or the television, yet little guidance on how we could lend our help. Thus, the trouble, that neither those who are ignorant, nor those who are informed, are able to help fellow human beings. Nobody, not even the most powerful men and women, cladded in richness, sitting at conferences designed to plan an end to human crisis, can fathom a solution to these bloody wars. Nobody, not even the boisterous organizations that wave flags that they symbolize for peace, can reckon an end to human suffering claiming lives in every continent. Not even people like you and me, who unveil such stories of human horror on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, but have no roadmaps on how we could be of help to our brothers and sisters of all colors and creed in their hour of need. I feel helpless and defeated, scrolling ruthlessly past the picture of this bewildered child, not even having the chance to pay my respects to her. I feel exhausted by hearing of all the bloodshed and war crimes that are being committed heinously, yet having no sure answer on the puzzle of how I could offer my piece of help to make this any better.
Sure, it’ll take more time for me to figure out how I can help those who are already facing the horrors of war, but I’ve promised myself to keep looking. And in the meanwhile, I could make sure to make amends with those around me, and to extinguish the potential sparks that fly around me. You and I must, within our individual capacities, make sure to extend our hands of support and of compassion to those in our immediate societies, to those who suffer at the hand of human prejudices, or human cruelties. We have to together try to build a better world by first shaping the very societies to which we belong ourselves, by being vocal against injustices and being kind in the face of brutality. Because maybe then, piece by piece, we might all one day, collectively heal.
