Issue XXIV: Perspective

There was a night in this town, about a year ago now. It was the goodbye drinks of a good friend. He was the kind of person who knows the whole city and brings an air of drama and mischief wherever he goes. The night he left there was a visible trail of broken hearts that led the way from the heel of his boot. We went to all the usual pubs that night. We saw the bartenders who had seen us cry as many times as they had seen us buy a round. As the trail of broken hearts followed us in the snow, shaped by his boot prints, so did the drama, some of which was my own. I remember having a conversation that night that constricted the world around me. It made the city feel infinitely smaller. Air suddenly felt like a commodity that was embargoed by my turtleneck as anxieties compiled upon one another and took on a life of their own. 

I went to sleep that night drunk and swept up by the littleness of my life. The next morning I woke up to news that two major earthquakes had hit my home country. 7.8 and 7.7 magnitudes on the Eastern border. Casualties climbed from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands. Millions were displaced overnight. Suddenly, the unthinkable happens and the Earth -literally, for millions- gets pulled out from under your feet. A seismic shift. The worries that had felt like the end of the world to me literally hours ago shifted into the kind of trivial matters I would have given so much to have again as my worst. The night that my little life deemed matters of love and betrayal cataclysmic, cataclysm in its truest meaning was occurring in homes a continent away. 

Life does that sometimes. One minute we can be so preoccupied by the trivial and the next moment the unimaginable happens. The shifting of perspective is so sudden and unceremonious that the whiplash knocks the air from your lungs. It humbles you. Your heart aches and breaks for people in lands you have never seen and people you will never meet. You hear people pray in wails in your own tongue -though they say all children cry in the same language-. You wonder what it even means to hurt for a people. What difference would it have made if the earthquakes were on the other side of the border? What difference would it have made if the devastation and the innumerable casualties belonged to another nation than my own?

—

Life is made up of a compilation of oscillating perspectives. As I was writing this, I received the final grade for a paper I thought I may have failed. It turned out to be one of the best grades I’ve ever received. Minutes later, this high was suddenly grounded by headlines in the news of atrocities committed on the other side of the Mediterranean. A few moments later I received an email from a dream job application, inviting me to an interview. Shortly after that I saw another headline about a far-right rally in Europe. The world is big, the world is terrifying and often a terrible place. My life feels so immensely small in comparison. I find myself getting overwhelmed by the endless stream of information, uninvitedly provided by the internet. We don’t seem to have a choice as to when we are faced with devastating information (not to be misunderstood as a point to not pay attention to these atrocities - it is integral that we do pay and bring attention to those whose voices are stifled. We cannot and must not look away). I don’t particularly know how to make sense of a world of stimulus and whiplash. I suppose one thing I know for sure is getting lost in the things we lose, in the steps we as humans take away from good will drown you. 

Perhaps, the main idea I wish to touch on today will get lost in the gloom of my tone, or in fact the deep despair reality often incites. Perhaps, exactly as it pertains to my point, discussing the individual experience of whiplash in a world so vast feels trivial, and its importance pales in the comparison of aforementioned headlines. However, I do still believe there is value in addressing the individual; the individual who somehow must find ways to carry on existing in their life -as little as it may be- as the world around us seemingly implodes. I will clarify as explicitly as I can, when I talk of perspective, I in no way wish to imply that we can’t suffer because suffering occurs on an inconceivable scale elsewhere. Suffering is not an elective. Our suffering will occur whether we feel morally justified in experiencing it or not, as will our joy. These things are not set in some predetermined rubric, but are entirely relative.

Ultimately the point I am trying to make is that being aware of the world is a necessary yet taxing feat. It is an entirely human response to feel guilt for the comparatively miniscule problems of our lives when the rights to safety, shelter, warmth, justice are taken away from others in front of our eyes. But we cannot succumb to the calloused apathy or the exhausted burnout that inevitably arises from indefinite sorrow. I know for myself that it is easier written than done, and perhaps I am writing these words as a reminder for myself as much as to anyone who may read them, but you are allowed to feel sorrow and joy for the mundanities of the life you lead. Not only is this an act of self preservation but your self preservation is inherently an act of resilience and resistance. We cannot practice awareness or activism without affording ourselves the basic necessities for our mental sustainability. 

As the snow does not get to choose the ground it falls on, we do not get to choose the land we are born on to. In positions of privilege we like to pretend that we are the snow that befalls a glimmering mountain and helplessly spectate as other flakes turn into sludge under the boots of men. Unlike the snow, we have the agency to decide to act when we see a boot hovering over another. 

“Protect the part of you that still winces at pain. Refuse to become too familiar with tragedy. Our souls were meant to stir.” Cole Arthur Riley