Some days, the little irritants of life threaten to take over. A glass of water spills all over a kitchen counter. A brisk wind slams a door on my thumb and, with a painful blast, blackens the nail.
On days like these, I try to ward off bad moods by telling myself that “lots of people are having real troubles, so quit the self-pity and suck it up.”
Never has that been truer than today as disaster after disaster befalls the far-away country of Japan.
But the floors of my house stay firm beneath my feet, and I can’t really imagine the feel of an earthquake. The ocean remains several thousand miles away from Minnesota, and I find it hard to wrap my mind around a tsunami.
My life goes on as normal. I make breakfast and check my email, following daily patterns even as the videos and photos of massive trauma in far-away Japan flicker across the TV screen. The tragedy is disturbing, and I feel sad for the suffering victims, but it seems more like a movie than a depiction of real life.
Then someone mentions that Japan’s weather is wintry and cold and how awful that must be, and with a blaze of insight, suddenly I think I understand.
To be left without shelter on a cold winter day, not to mention winter night, would be horrible. Add to that the loss of loved ones and the daily needs of food and clean water and possibly clothing, and I begin to get a true feel of the suffering that Japanese people are undergoing.
No longer is the disaster something read off a teleprompter on the TV screen, but is now an actual feeling in my gut.
I can imagine it; feel the icy wind on my hunched shoulders, see the frigid black night above my head, feel the painful loss of loved ones. Suddenly the whole thing is real.
To check accuracy, I google the name of a Japanese city mentioned on a web site—Ofanato, Japan. The weather forecast as given by AccuWeather states that Ofanatu will have a high today of 32F with a light snow mist and a low tonight of 23F.
That doesn’t sound much different from Grand Marais, Minnesota. The magnitude of the disaster is now very real.
Add to that the problems of rolling blackouts and evacuation shelters without water, electricity and oil as reported by MSN. Add to that the somber fact that nuclear plants are struggling to avoid meltdowns and radiation has already leaked into the atmosphere and Japan’s problems seem almost insurmountable.
With my newfound clarity, I suddenly understand, that in addition to donations of time and money, we should all probably offer words of prayer in whatever sense of the word we pray.
It couldn’t hurt.
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