Too Soon Forgotten

Yesterday the headlines on my Internet home page told of the unfolding tragedy in China. The reports of the devastation kept escalating. A city of 18,000 people has been buried, it told us. Reading further on in the report of the thousands of students buried in their schools, I was horrified. I did, however, find myself very detached. It is so far away. So, I brought it closer to home, pictured how I would feel if it happened here in my town. If it was my children's school that was collapsed; my home that was destroyed; my spouse killed. By doing this I was able to feel what I consider to be more proper sympathy for those poor people.

Then I clicked back to the home page, and watched the rotating news headlines. As apparently important as this 7.9 earthquake, is how to get your beach body ready. Well, I suppose that I can understand that there are other concerns in this world, and that one event cannot be the focus of all the news stories. People do need to get fit for those bikini's, after all we don't want a lot of tubbies walking around at the beach and pool. I tried not to judge the absurdity of this topic being of equal importance.

This morning, I turned on my computer, waited for it to warm up, opened my home page, waiting to see how the Chinese people were faring. Had more people been saved, more devastation reported. Well, apparently I will have to go beyond the front page to find out, because today the important things we need to know about are tasty appetizers, and prep schools.

How soon, here in our land of abundance, we forget about the misfortunes of those we do not see.