Victim: there is no word more vile, in any culture or language, in any corner of human enterprise. Yet the news reports tragedy with arrays of statistics that creep in from the start - turning all, survivor and dead, into 'Consumable Victims' - ready to sell to emotionally starving masses.
Christmas Day, a Tsunami that ended a quarter million lives and left many more shattered - all tossed through life like flotsam. Yet, what I recall hearing most, time and time again, was numbers. I do understand how for scale and context such things play a role, but ... not when used with such constancy, not for manners macabre. Not when, at a cyclone tearing through Burma, the comparisons come so quickly! The numbers keep rising, the news keeps reporting and all along, the comparisons are made. It's like watching a sick countdown in reverse, with everyone gathered close, waiting to see which tragedy will have the honour of being the worst. I imagine betting pools being run in news rooms across the world; vast sums of money exchanged over rising death tolls.
There's nothing better than a victim, except lots of victims, to bring out the harbingers, the vultures and everyone so concerned. Almost all offer sympathy to those distant places. Some offer money and tangible aid. The tragedy is how the two are joined. That belief, that sad truth: without a wellspring of sympathy, the money will not flow. So the NGOs, the aid organisations, the charities - they are in on the scam. Not because they wish this, but because they understand "whatever it takes."
So, by the end, from the beginning, each of the afflicted has been stripped down to a single word: victim.
It reminds me of funerals, where offers of sympathy flood in while the same offers of empathy run dry. These two 'pathies' are not the same - one is an easy out, a wall that keeps some distance between the givers and receivers. It tells the latter that they are victims all. It is used by the emotionally lazy for it requires little, especially of sharing.
Yet some understand: they offer empathy, a willingness to share pain, to acknowledge that all hurt varies, that we travel that path in unique and personal ways. Willing to risk feeling, showing us that they too contain a burning. Perhaps less intense or of flames with different colours, but they give us that and it is a precious gift. They enter our space, join it to their own and in that mix we find surcease. They do not create victims, of themselves or us. They possess that rare courage to acknowledge pain and to offer you their own. From this comes understanding, that everyone is fragile and, with that knowledge, maybe ... maybe sometime, someday not so far away, maybe the need to bury the dead in sympathy will end.
With a little understanding, the world can be set and ready - to avoid many tragedies, the man-made ones, the starving and the lost. For those terrible events we cannot sway, the means will be there to address the carnage well.
At the moment we choose to understand, we are ready to call ourselves humanity.
Author notes
Edits: 5
In a list
A contest entry
- Prose [as promised] by Naridill.
875 points, ended May 24, 14 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think (Critical Honesty Appreciated)
Comments
1 - 16 of 16
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Definitely gold worthy
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4u.
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You make me feel human. These words offer such life, such living & such emotions. I adore your use of language to connect with the reader. Perhaps a better phrase, your use of you to connect with readers.
Thanks for entering,
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I hate to admit I'm stll confused by the empathy/sypathy dichotomy. I asked my therapist how he avoids being bogged down by his client's pain. He said I empathize, not sympathize. You probably understand, perfectly...
I also see this as a prime example of how contradiction is the 'normal' state of affairs- Your description of the heinous requirements to get people to help... I wrote a recent piece, that pales by comparisson on contradiction, if you want to see what I mean. -
I love your prose writes. Such an in depth take on the subject. You are beautiful.
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i love YOU... sigh... it took me Godknowshowmany "refresh this page" to read this prose. you are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO wonderful, umm where are my words now??? this is so true that it cuts the insides of one's soul. i feel a little guilty but a lot better somehow.
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So what?! - are you saying that I gave your soul an enema then? Coolness!
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however you prefer
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You know the funny thing? I've always thought my tendency to 'offer pain' in light of another's was a selfish habit that I had. I read here that it is the opposite.
I know of no other way really to handle tragedy than to say, I understand, at least on some level, the pain you are experiencing.
It does make me feel bad, though. I never intend to make someone else's pain seem trivial or lesser by sharing my own.
Does that make sense?
You know how I feel about the word 'victim.'
We create these tragic entities that have so little human quality. It happened during 9/11 as well. Time and again I watched those towers fall .. macabre, and I couldn't look away, until my daughter, so inherantly Human, said "Mommy, why does it keep happening?"
I turned the news off ...
You're brilliant, you know.
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I believe we all tend to share our pain in order to console others. In the past, I have indeed felt selfish in doing so. However, some of the things we go through, we go through in order to bring another through. I didn't know you had a daughter. How old is she?
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What a thought provoking write. There are different variations of victim; criminal, and psychological, and it sometimes becomes a very muddied line; a victim of a crime, or psychologically victimized; though taken literally, it may boil down to whether or not you survived. I like to use the word survivor, as it depicts strength rather than weakness. But there are many that like to play at being a victim, as they feel a sense of justification, a self-removal that they had no part in the original crime, so they live their lives in an altruistic manner; blaming everyone else for every mistake they make thereafter, instead of taking responsibility for their part in it. Sympathy is a heady drug for some, whereas empathy is the ultimate act of selflessness. And yes, humanity at its best.
Excellent thoughts... had me (ouch) thinking.
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This comment is just one of the reasons I love you.
From one survivor to another:
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Ditto.
I loved what you're daughter said. So true. -
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She is a survivor too.
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"They possess that rare courage to acknowledge pain and to offer you their own...From this comes understanding, that everyone is fragile.."
Being in the human professions I learn that every day of my life... even after all these years in social work and psychology, each day i learn that I'm just as human. Sometimes there are no answers, and one can just be an ear and reflect back... and perhaps, if needed, touch and hold... and accept the cycle of Life/Death/Life.
Yes, I don't like the word "victim" too..that is the same like labelling someone... it is compassion and understanding and love and care and action and response that allows a "victim" to become a victor. I can write books about this but you wrote it with such insight and compassion here, Kate. Bravo to you.
~ Nicolette
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