With the world's daily woes increasing at home and abroad, our sypathetic nerves are stretched to the snapping point as we try to relate (compassionately, mind you) to every tragedy offered in the media. The current overload of major disasters pushes our stress buttons as never before, and we're thinking and saying, "those poor people" more and more.
We pray, send money, devour the news and try to get a true perspective of cause and effect and how it all relates to us. But eventually, living with this vicarious trauma starts to kill us, too, so we retreat to a safer place. Compassion seems to have a half-life. Probably better to be in the war, survive the floods, or be buried by an earthquake to learn what lasting and true compassion really mean.
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