Tragedy Today

The world is different than it was when we were kids.   I know this is true for every generation.  But hear me out. 

There is a ton of tragedy in this world.  Think about the past year.  Think about the  headlines.  Odds are that the headlines that came into your thoughts were some of the really terrible things that have happened.

Think about how we welcome tragedy into our lives via the media.  We are shown suffering of others on the TV and we read about it in the papers.  Now think about 50 years ago.  Network television was in its infancy and didn't permeate every facet of our lives.  Today, the media can literally bring us to tragedy.   Things that we would not have otherwise witnessed we are watching through our own eyes.   We literally watch people fall apart.   What the short news cycle doesn't show us is that people get up.  The pick themselves up and they put themselves back together. 

Now if tragedy has struck close to home either in our community or your circles of friends, you might have seen this.  Maybe, if you looked hard enough, you saw the mom of the sick kid actually playing with her kid on the playground without tearing up.   You saw the single parent walking down the street with their child smiling.   You see people all around you persevering and simply putting one foot in front of the other.  This part of the human story, we don't see in the news nearly as often.  We don't see people recovering from their struggles and we don't hear the stories of the "common people" in everyday tragedies. 


So yes, while tragedy does touch all over the world, remember that there are people in your community all over the country living through their tragedies everyday.  Something as simple as a smile from a stranger can make a world of difference to these people.