That's Just the World We Live In

Springfest was astronomically more fun that I thought it was going to be. Basically I spent the entire day showing people the campus, answering their questions, generally being a good host for the school. It's so nice to have a niche for my "know-it-all"ness. And it's nice to be around people that are positive and excited.

I did have a weird moment though. Someone made a joke about the earthquake and Japan and just sort of jokingly said "To soon, too soon!" and we laughed it off. But you know. We talked about it a bit after that. Apparently thousands of people have died or gone missing. Just thousands? I thought. That's not too bad for a natural disaster. Really? REALLY?! How could I think thousands was a laughable number? There's a line in a story by Mishima spoken by someone in the face of a family tragedy.

"Three of them! What nonsense! Three of them," she said. It was too large a number for one family, too small a number for society. 

Isn't that just the way?  Thousands die in an earthquake, and somehow we manage to wrap our minds around that number. Or we can't and it doesn't mean anything to us. And a single death, like the death of a loved one, of course that is a tragedy. I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to make light of something like that. But somehow it seems...more natural. Like it is a reasonable loss. But why is it okay to laugh at large scale tragedy happening across the world but not at funerals? Life is life. And in both instances, life is lost. Even more than that I want to know how I can have a day like today, a beautiful wonderful sunny day while tragedy surrounds us everywhere we look. It's a hard thing to accept sometimes. And I'm not cynical enough to say, "It's because it hasn't happened to us." Of course that contributes. But I think I like the way Hobbes puts it: