Reflection time fades as quickly as it hits.

               Reflection is on my mind today and many others after yesterday’s tornado devastation. Something happens in the world or in someone’s life and we all sit back and say “my heart breaks and I just can’t imagine.” All of a sudden everyone is glued to their TV overwhelmed with empathy and shock for people they have never known or ever will. We try to imagine what it would be like to crawl out of the rubble and have everything gone. We try to imagine what it would it would be like to stay at work praying your child is safe at school only to find out you will never see your child again and couldn’t be there to hold them when the terror hit. The whole country sits down and cries wishing they could do something to ease the hell strangers are facing.

                Every time a tragedy hits we all go quiet and pay attention but for too many people it only takes days to get back to life and forget. We carry on in the comfort we have with things and people we don’t realize we are so damn lucky to have. We go right back to buying things we don’t need and putting off people we do need. Reflection time fades as quickly as it hit and really its human nature to not think about how easily life can change. No one wants to think about what ifs and how much of life they are taking advantage of until they have to. Or until something in the world reminds us how fast it can be taken away or destroyed. We all have that it won’t happen to me syndrome in one way or another.

                What if we all stopped living that way and hung on to the feeling we have when we see people lose everything? What if we didn’t ease back into our comforts and refused to let it fade until the next tragedy hit? I sometimes wonder what people would do differently with their life if they really understood they aren’t in charge of when or how it can all be taken away. If someone knew the sky was going to pick up their car and swallow it, would they spend every single day working to pay for a car they couldn’t actually afford or would they have kept it simple from the start. If they knew ahead of time their neighbor was going to be pulled from the wreckage lifeless, would they have said hello the day before? If they knew every single thing they owned would be gone in a blink of an eye would they still have maxed out the credit card at the mall last week?

                We all know the answers to these questions but we don’t live it or at least we get right back to it when the tragedy fades for those who aren’t directly in it anyway. I have learned in the past few years to hang on to reflection because it’s too important to let fade away. That care we feel for others when something horrible happens is not supposed to be a temporary feeling induced by shock. It’s supposed to be part of everyday life because that’s how you affect someone’s life and your own just by waking up in the morning. When the media finds something else to report and the events of yesterday are no longer getting the ratings they aim for, don’t let the feeling you had when you saw those images on TV leave you.  Hang onto that feeling of caring about people you don’t even know before the media starts blasting the same old stories once again about all the evils in the world that make you not even want to leave your house. After all if you still have a house, you have much more than a lot of people right now.