The older I get, the less I understand about the transience of life.
The Nepal mudslide tragedy is so shocking, but somehow I find myself wanting to watch more of these videos in different angles. These scenes behind my screen are so unbelievably unreal. The violent crashes of water, and how small each human is. And how easily they can be buried in milliseconds.
I want to donate some money, but at the same time it feels narcissistic to even want to participate; it's not my tragedy, and also, how much is ever enough for a disaster of this scale. While I don't think money can really comfort the ones affected, I guess if it even assuage the smallest fraction of someone's pain and it might also reduce the shock to my system, it is worth it. The Taurus in me actually checked if donating is tax deductible, and then I find it so ludicrous that I actually did that. I am but a cog in the system, an unfeeling callous human in the face of others' misery.
The last natural catastrophe of this scale and horror that happened in my lifetime was the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, I remembered that I did not know the word 'tsunami', and that was when we learnt the sign of a tsunami coming is when the waves retreat far into the sea further than a normal day.
How is it that after two decades, and a whole lot of technological, media, communications leaps later, we still cannot prevent, inform nor act in time? Apparently, glacier collapses that can wipe out civilizations are possible. Perhaps it’s naive, but how is it that after centuries of engineering and innovation, we have not yet figured out how to protect human bodies from sudden, violent deletion?
We’ve built a world that feels so structured and controlled, yet a few seconds of shifting earth can still reduce all our systems, and all our lives to dust.
Socrates said it best: "I know that I know nothing".