One Rose

I have never been able to feel correctly about the tragedies in the world. I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened. I can remember seeing teachers cry. Everyone who talked about it had such an emotional response and I just…didn’t feel it. I knew cognitively it was awful and horrible and tragic but knowing that did not cause the emotional reaction that everyone else seemed to have. Even now, writing this feels like a confession, like I’m admitting I don’t have a big enough heart to care about all those lives lost and/or ruined. But I guess that’s mostly true- I don’t have a big enough heart to even begin to try to hold a small fraction of the total pain that was caused that day. New York might as well have been a foreign country to 17 year old me and I knew of tragedies in other countries back then that also could not make their way into my emotions…until everything changed.

When I spent a year in Honduras suffering got closer to me than it ever had before. I didn’t feel it when I read up on the statistics of violence and poverty before I left, I didn’t feel it when I first encountered the conditions of the neighborhood, I only began to feel it when…individuals became my loved ones. It took time to make friends, but little by little I had many, many friends in Honduras and little by little their suffering became my suffering. I still couldn’t feel the pain of the entire country, but my heart could ache with Dona Santos, Maricella, Estefany (my “daughter”), Edguardo, Jenifer, and the many beloveds who entered my heart that year. The difference was that Love allowed my heart to share in their pain and somehow, paradoxically, sharing in so much pain was closely connected to an indescribable joy of loving and being loved, instead of leading to despair. My whole world was changed. After I had been home about a year, Haiti had a devastating earthquake. I watched the news and was surprised to find tears streaming down my cheeks. The images of the streets of Haiti looked so much like the streets I’d walked to my loved ones in Honduras. I was crying for the Haitians, but mostly because it reminded me of the struggles my dear friends face. My friend’s sufferings had opened my heart to the suffering of others.

I don’t think we were created to know all the tragedies of the world. I truly believe it’s harming us to know the worst things happening in all parts of the globe, especially when it distracts us from the people right around us who are suffering, especially when it leads us to a feeling of despair because there’s nothing we can do, and especially when it causes us to doubt the absolute goodness of humanity. Without love, suffering is meaningless and hopeless, and we can’t love very well thousands of people on the other side of the world. Love requires nearness. On the other side, vicarious trauma, or the trauma that is experienced by exposure to another’s trauma, is very real. So many of us are experiencing vicarious trauma through our consumption of the news without experiencing the necessary love that must accompany it.

Around the time we took home our current foster daughter I was reading a book that had a subsection detailing the chilling statistics of child abuse in our country and the long-reaching consequences. The statistics made me numb, overwhelmed and hopeless. It also altered my feelings a bit towards our foster daughter. We didn’t think she would be very long term, so it added to the helpless feeling. What difference is it going to make if she’s just going to leave us soon? What’s the point? For a completely different reason, someone encouraged me to read chapter 21 of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery. The Little Prince is from a different planet and he comes to earth to find friends. In chapter 21 he meets a fox who begs him to tame him, even though he is so busy looking for friends. The fox explains what he means to tame him,

“To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.”

The fox later goes on to explain how he is rather bored and the world is all the same to him,

“But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat.”

Through a series of simple gestures the Little Prince does tame the fox. The story continues,

“So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.”

The fox’ world had been forever changed by being tamed.

When I read the statistics about child abuse, all the foster children were like a hundred thousand other children. But once we have “been tamed” by our particular foster baby (and it happens very quickly) she becomes unique to us in all the world, and the best part is our world will be forever changed. The fox concludes by telling him that, “you become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

I think we would be better off to “tame or be tamed” by one other person than to dwell on the vast amounts of suffering in large groups. Our ‘feeling bad’ doesn’t change the world, but loving one person is guaranteed to change the whole landscape of each other’s worlds.