I walked into curves with the bladder cancer pamphlets firmly tucked in my arms.Bladder cancer is the third most recurring cancer in the US and is rarely known to people, especially women , who tend to ignore the basic symptoms. Feeling good that I am trying to spread awareness and having already obtained permission from the manager, I promptly handed the pamphlets to one of the coordinators.One of the other workers, who had no clue about this, asked me about the pamphlets. On hearing it was about cancer,she said,"Oh! cancer is so depressing. Why do you want to put up such pamphlets. Nowadays, you hear about cancer everywhere".On a further note, finding it was about bladder cancer,she said,"What is bladder cancer, girl?. No..I dont want to hear about it. I am sure it will be something depressing".I came home , quite upset, my mood being set by the above statements, wondering when people would change. Some friends visited us that night .We were discussing about the movie Kandahar, a reality movie,which shows people struggling in Afghanisthan for things that we take for granted. We decided to watch some other movie as Kandahar is too depressing to watch and will not lighten up the mood. I was wondering how the lady , who is shown suffering in that movie ,would feel listening to us call the movie depressing.I woke up the next morning, everything forgotten, opened google news only to find out about the raging war in Lebanon. "Oh no ! one more war. Man..these wars are too depressing."....
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
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6 comments:
It is sad that reality is mostly depressing :-)
On the other hand, ignorance is bliss...(albeit, for a limited time only)
I think, most of us consider ourselves to be the center of the universe. So, anything that directly affects us is the one we care about and dismiss everybody else's worries or concerns as trivial. If we apply this principle to everything that happens around us and to everyone involved in it, it is no wonder for us to visualise anybody else's problem's as depressing unless the problem has some direct connection to our problems.
Hmm....this is something I have thought about a lot too. I have a very low threshold for seeing suffering, and any heart-rending images: I scramble to switch channels. I empathize with their suffering: I just can't see prolonged images of it.
You have touched 2 important topics: one is awareness and the other is sensitivity to portrayal of unpleasant situations. With regards to the latter, I guess different people have different thresholds.
But with the former, I agree that we need to make ourselves aware of certain issues.
@Mindframes,
We are thinking in the same wavelength.Thats exactly what I wanted to convey . No wonder I am married to you..:-)
@Saumya,
Yes,I was talking about sensitivity but mostly wanted to portray how one would react to things depending on their circumstances.The threshold will vary if the war is in lebanon or in chennai.I think empathizing denotes character but your reaction or some fruitful action towards someone's suffering varies depending on how involved you are in that situation.Something that you would consider trivial will shine in a totally different light when it happens to you.For ex, the lady at curves started empathizing with me once she learnt my background and almost apologised to me. Till then, she found the situation depressing.We are humans and we will be selfish with various degress of threshold.I am selfish enough to think about my problems and ready to criticize others who dont understand my situation, but behave the same when it comes to someone else's problem.That is the crux of the blog.
Hearing people suffering where we have less or no control makes me sad. It stays in the background thought process for a long time.
I think that is when people go in search of Prayers and Hope!
But as you mentioned, life certainly goes on...
I can't say much that hasn't beens said already... at the crux of it- I'm all for awareness. Especially the kind where the steps needed to become aware are very simple.
Also looking at it differently, information is the engine that drives the world today and I suppose its generally accepted that the person armed with more information does better than his/her counterpart with less.
Also, to stray even further (but somehow related), when more information is available, the onus comes down even harder on the individual to make their own decisions (in this case diagnosis or some simple form of it). So this awareness you are trying to create in this case, empowers people- in my opinion.
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