Next to me in the coffee shop, an elderly lady loudly complains to everyone who cares to listen. How poignant it is, this refugees’ crisis. How she doesn’t understand how nothing can be done to help all those poor people. How entire families are torn for life. How her hair had cost 80 euros. Seventyninepointfive full euros. Scandalous, don’t you think so, miss?
I try to escape her glaring eyes. I’d like to escape and take all of them with me, those refugees. To a world without expensive hairdressers. To a world where their devastating pictures don’t need to travel around social media. To a world where a simple I’m on the run is enough to offer help.
I’m not sure where this world is. It doesn’t seem to be ours. Ours is full of rich self-preservation. I have worked hard for my wealth. I will not share it. I do not wish to be bothered with the misery of others.
Well, I’m more than less disgusted by those I’s.
And still, there I am, blogging about my petty worries. About the difficulties my kids face at their expensive private school. About depression, because my perfect life is not perfect enough. About baking homemade cookies. All the while, somewhere else, another mother has to choose between her own drowning or that of her child. Knowing she doesn’t have a choice, in the end. It will probably be both anyway.
More than ever, my world has two realities. One reality is manageable, the other is immense. The manageable reality is my reference, a framework to enable me to keep functioning. It enables me to get up at a quarter past seven to cut some pieces of imported mango for my precious children. To sigh when looking at overflowing laundry baskets. To nag about an energy-devouring meeting that took longer than expected. It’s the framework that’s keeping me whole. The Frame World.
The other part is bigger and endlessly more complex. It’s the angry, overarching Dome World. In this world I’m the naive, fleet-footed creature that is called out to fight the Great Evil that is hiding in the Dome, where no escape is possible. It’s the theme of many heroic stories, like I love to read them. Lord of the Flee.
The reality of the Dome World today is raw and ruthless. We can try to change the picture of the drowned toddler in an icon, giving him wings and balloons, but it’s too late. It’s too late for all those children who didn’t wash up at the feet of a photographer. We’ve let them down.
There is no escape from this Dome World. You can only bang on the glass wall and try to hide in your own Frame World. But the Frame of those fleeing families has been reduced to firewood. Without a frame they’re adrift. More than literally.
Later today, I will find out once again where I can contribute to help.
Later today. Again, I’m disgusted. Later today, because I’ve promised homemade pizza to my children.
After all, my Frame World is still there.
How do you deal with the discrepancy between your own private life and the tragedies around it? Does your Frame World help keeping you sane or is it rather keeping you from acting?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by K10K @ The Penguin and The Panther. Photo credit: Bart Everson. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.
So well said! I constantly feel that same conflict within myself and have yet to find an elegant solution. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), you frame works is there to keep you “sane”. So I try to enjoy the good things within my frame which can give me the much needed strength to help where possible in the Dome 🙂
Thank you Maman Aya! Yes, staying sane is needed to be able to act!
Great perspective on a topic that I struggle with as well! There is the micro and the macro view and I switch between the two. When I get panicked and upset about the macro I narrow the focus to the mico, my immediate world, your frame world.
Thank you Elizabeth! I agree, micro and macro sound good as well. I also tend to flee towards this micro-frame-world when the big world is getting too much…
Very well said. Sigh. Our world…
Thanks Karyn. And I sigh with you…
Agree agree agree!
Thanks 🙂
There are so many layers to the reality which we see in our everyday lives. And then there is also those parallel realities which affect us, if we are sensitive enough. This is a powerful post, thank you for sharing your perspective.
In our small way, we can think of how to help…
Thank you Purnima! Indeed, we try to help in babysteps…
So, so hard. It’s not practical to abandon all we know and have and actually who would it help? So I keep on trying to make a difference, to be frugal and sensible and to keep giving away what we don’t need or where we have excess to ensure that others can be helped. We all need to pull together in the same direction and share more and then there will be enough for everyone. Mich x
Thank you Michelle!
Yes, it is so so hard… But we keep on trying!
I loved this post. Like Simona, I feel like writing a post in response to your questions!
Thank you EcoZiva! You’re welcome to do so, I’d be honoured!
Wow, what a post. It’s short and like a dagger. Not in a bad way, but in an igniting kind of way. The truth IS that disparity among us exists because some of us have more and some of us have less, and it can only continue to be so, if some of us continue to have less. I just wrote a poem about this that I hope to be bold enough to share with others from memory, so I can look at my fellow humans in the eye as we talk about what we can do to make things better. Thank you for writing this, because it definitely is a small change, but it may also be the catalyst for those who read it, to make big changes.