Myanmar and Relativism

I felt like writing something about the news, and because I watch CBS Morning News (I like the whole team), had to choose between Positively Prom Week or

Myanmar.

I picked Myanmar over Prom Week.

I know, I know. You wanted Prom Week. So check this website (sure, they're selling stuff, but it's still cute) for a Prom Dos and Don'ts list. Maybe we'll embellish it later.

But.

A cyclone wiped out nearly one hundred thousand people this week in an impoverished country, Myanmar (think Burma, Monks, Thailand, that little cranny of the world). The military regime blocked humanitarian efforts at rescue and support, too, strangely enough. Food, medicine, water, all turned away by the junta. The alternative for the people of Myanmar is salt water.

Today the junta let U.N. rescue efforts into the country, and Turkey promised a million dollars in relief assistance.

Why should we care? It’s so far away.

Maybe it helps us put our own stuff into perspective.

Ironically, I tell depressed people not to watch the news. And I mean it. If everything depressing makes things worse, then turn off the teev. (Television has everything depressing, even funny can be depressing when you know it's funny but you can't laugh).

For those of us who can take it, the suffering of our race, the human race, I mean, not the race divided, watching the news is simply what we do. Although depressing, scary, and sobering, events near and far away tickle at our sense of relativism, assuming we we let our defenses down, release ourselves from our self-protective comfort zones.

Relativism is that healthy perspective, the one that mental health professionals often talk about, the one we can’t ram at you for fear you’ll think us not empathetic. Yet we hope that at some point you’ll come to own it, too. Really own it and find comfort in it.

You can still be depressed. It's okay.

Relativism means:

There are others worse off than me.

There but for the grace of . . go I.

It could be us in Mayanmar. But it isn’t.

So we give charity and lobby for our government to help the suffering nations of the world. And for a moment, from our armchairs watching digital H-D, that hot cup of coffee at our sides, nibbling on a croissant, wondering, What should I make for lunch, from this heaven on earth some of us ask, How did I get so lucky?

Holocaust survivors think this way every single day. Clean drinking water and food? Gevaldik (delicious)

Not everyone has it. It's salt water in Myanmar. That’s what they’ve got.

Asleep as Cyclone Nargis hit, people woke up to the sound of high winds, roofs flying, trees falling, some on their own homes. I can't imagine.

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