Survival Revival

It's been astonishingly easy to recede into my new life as dog owner, insomniac and dutiful daughter. This new life has consisted of a near obsession with getting my dog to eliminate bodily waste outdoors, never ever sleeping in, and sobbing internally at the sight of my mother fast becoming vegetative. When you put it like that, I tell myself, it's no wonder you're so bloody crusty these days!

And yet, all I need do is pick up the trusty Toronto Star as I've been doing daily now, and there it is in black and white for me; the gift of perspective meted out by my favourite journalists and reporters. They are my unsung heroes, I don't know what most of them look like, and I doubt they have any ideas about me, but time and time again, they post cautionary tale after cautionary tale, warning me what ignorance does, what unchecked egomania turns into, what fucked-upedness lurks when broken spirits are left to reset their own bones.

I nearly wept with admiration when I read about the two Aussie miners who survived on one cereal bar and licked water off the collapsed mine shaft walls, only to emerge two weeks later(I think it was two weeks) with the energy to raise their fists in triumph and fashion smiles of gratitude for fresh air and the sight of loved ones' faces.

Or the Ugandan mothers dying of AIDS, writing memory books for their future-orphaned children, to compel them not to stand headlong and crippled in their losses but to remain steadfast with a happier past that will accompany them through the loneliness and hardship ahead.

Or the Palestinian families who didn't support the Hamas faction's rise to power, who are subsisting on lentils and despair till their wages are re-instated, watching the scant emergency supplies being passed by them to their Hamas-supporting neighbours. All for the price of bearing witness to the unpopular outcome of their democratic process, an outcome the international community feels makes them unworthy of their daily bread.

I could go on. And on. And so on. I read these stories, I see the pictures, no less potent in a black and white freeze frame, and I wonder what right I have to sob or panic or wring my often idle hands. I know suffering is subjective, and I've never really liked those people that would begrudge you a good sob at your hard luck simply because suffering is more severe elsewhere. But goddamn if it doesn't humble me some to realize I have food in my fridge. That I live in a country where the LRA doesn't steal my neighbours' children away to arm them with guns and fates worse than death. I am not amidst a civil war that fells family trees swiftly and without mercy, leaving human forests barren in its daily wake.

I'm a complete sap for happy endings, even though I know that the older you get, the harder they come. I know my mom won't get better, but occasionally, I need reminding that life will go on with and eventually, without her. There will be bills to pay, dogshit to pick up, and the odd moments of perspective found, to light the way between the darker coridoors I so often find myself in.

And so, I count the days till my entry to that world of perspective provision called journalism. This is not the happy ending I'm so prone to tacking onto my writings. It is the exhausted hope of someone gleaning illumination from whatever crack it breaks through.