Notice: The following article is an op-ed
What’s your day-to-day look like? You probably wake up, maybe scroll on your phone, get up, have some breakfast, brush your teeth, go to the gym, go to class or to work and so forth.
What’s your biggest concern day-to-day? Maybe it’s an exam or a paper you have to write, or that your roommate keeps using your coffee creamer. Then maybe, throughout your day you see a headline on your phone that looks a little like “hundreds killed in an airstrike overseas, thousands displaced.” You keep on scrolling. You keep worrying about that exam or your missing coffee creamer.
Here’s what your day doesn’t look like, but it does for someone else. They stay up all night while sirens fill the air, they crawl out of rubble as missile strikes destroy their city, their home. They worry about when their next meal is, they worry about survival. They make it to a local hospital, but only an airstrike will turn that very hospital to ash by morning. Chances are, they will be just another headcount of tomorrow’s headline.
That little headline you’ll read will be one story of hundreds. It’ll be one story told of thousands untold. You’ll keep scrolling. From the comfort and safety of your bed or your couch, you’ll keep scrolling. Because, you don’t read the news. It bums you out. You have bigger concerns. More pressing matters to tend to.
Those people – those lives – live in a reality where they can’t just scroll. They can’t just choose to ignore what’s happening. Because it’s actively happening to them.
All the while, you can choose to ignore something because it isn’t directly affecting you. In fact, they’re praying for someone like you – someone privileged enough to not be experiencing what they are – to step in. To help them. But you’ll comment “thoughts and prayers” and ignore it.
Because the fire isn’t burning on your door step – it’s on someone else’s. So why should you get a fire extinguisher? Don’t they have their own? You have more important things to do anyway. Plus, looking at their burning house makes you uncomfortable. It bums you out.
If you just shut your front door, ignore their fire and pretend it isn’t happening, then maybe it’s not a big deal? It’s not actually happening, right? But it is.
Closing your door doesn’t stop the fire from burning. Just because it’s not happening to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
