On Friday evening, after DH and I
finished cleaning the house (my mom demands a clean house when she is staying
over to pet sit), I opened my Facebook to see that the two friends I had made
while in Paris had noted their status as “safe” from the Paris Terror Attacks.
I immediately felt a cold chill run
down my spine and tried to google the news, checked on Twitter and finally
remember I have cable again and turned on the TV.
The news said then that there were
153 dead, 300+ injured in organized attacks that happened one after the other.
I saw the dazed look on people’s faces, running around for shelter, the broken glass
at the restaurant, the feed of the bomb that could be heard during the football
game and the startled football players, the rushing concert goers covered in
blood. The people exiting the football stadium singing La Marseillaise made my
eyes tear up and my heart ache.
I saw the people on Facebook
immediately praying for Paris, praying for the French, praying for the families
of the victims, pissed at ISIS, pissed off a terror, scared of what was to come
next.
I also saw a lot of my Venezuelans
friends saying “I feel bad for Paris, but, what about our dead?” Or “I see a
lot of people here giving a damn about Paris but who cares about what happens
in Venezuela?” Or “153 dead? We get more than that every day in the Capital and
who is mourning us?” “I see a bunch of
sheep changing their Facebook profile to the French flag, how about you care
about your own fucking country first?”
I wasn’t aware that the soul had a
limited supply of compassion. I wasn’t aware that we were unable to hurt for
your own country and hurt for the French, and for Japan, and Lebanon and
Venezuela and the people of Syria who are trapped by this regime and living an
every-day hell. I wasn’t aware that you
could only care for your own and fuck everyone else.
I was so disappointed, so hurt, so
flabbergasted, so naive. Maybe it’s easy for me to feel disappointed by my
friend’s feelings while they battle the rampant violence, danger, hunger and
hopelessness in Venezuela while I sit cozily here in the U.S.A. Maybe it’s unfair that I expect more from
people who have spent the last 20 years in a rapidly deteriorating country that
they no longer recognize as their own. Maybe it’s unfair to expect them to
think outside their own daily struggles and spare some thought, some hurt, some
pity and compassion, some empathy, some feeling for their fellow men outside
their own country.
As I saw them spewing even more
pettiness and anger and hatred I wanted to argue with them but what can I say? When
they are suffering and I am not? But knowing that, doesn’t stop me from feeling
that the attitude of ‘what about us’ it’s part of the problem, that culture of
me first, that way of living where you cannot spare a thought for something
that doesn’t affect you, THAT it’s part of the problem. When all you care is about what affects you
directly then we can’t move forward together.
I mourn for the news of Venezuela’s
deaths. I mourn by how callous and used to the violence the country I called
home, has gotten used to. I mourn for the friends who had died, for the ones
who had been kidnapped, for the ones who cannot find milk for their babies, or
diapers, or shampoo. Every time I walk into Publix and see Harina P.A.N. I mourn
for the fact that it’s a Venezuelan product in the U.S. that Venezuelans can’t
find in their supermarket.
I also mourn for the French, don’t
we all have enough room in our hearts to care for more than one cause? I saw
the pictures of some of the victims in Paris, so young, so happy in their Instagram
shots, so handsome and pretty some of them were, how goofy others. I saw their
faces and I mourn them too, as I mourn the couple of sisters who died at the
restaurant. I imagine my own sister and
myself going through that and it breaks my heart for the family of those two
women.
Can’t we care for them and care for
ours as well? I am so angry and sad at the many friends who see empathy for
others and caring for what happened in Paris as a weakness, or indifference to
the plights of Venezuela.
Violence breeds violence and
contempt and indifference, I think maybe that’s why my friends said the things
they said, maybe that’s why they have turned into people who can see someone
else’s pain and not think “I am sorry this is happening to you” but instead
think “Why should I care about you? What about my pain?”
Some of my friends were also condemning
the world for not intervening in the situation in Venezuela and fixing it. I am
no politician but I am not sure what that person expected, a war? A US
invasion? A foreign solution?
I don’t know, but it worries me
that it will change the rhetoric from indifference towards what’s happening to
the outside world to hatred for the outside world.
I wish they would understand that apathy
towards their fellow men it’s not going to fix the situation in Venezuela.
Apathy fixes nothing. Caring, does.
