It never ceases to amaze me, the difference it makes when any event, fact or statistic hits close to home. You can know 50 people who’ve lost their parents, but you don’t understand how awful it is until it happens to you. All of us know, intellectually, that cancer is terrible. But not in the visceral way that anyone who’s fought it, or lived with someone fighting it, does. I knew that 2 million children died from diarrhea each year in Africa. But it didn’t cost me sleep at night until I was flying with Air Serv International in Chad a couple of years ago, and the two-year-old son of the pilots’ cook died of the illness while I was there.
Why is it that staggering statistics don’t move us as much as a single human example? Perhaps we’re hardwired to respond more to local community connections, because that’s good for survival of the species. But I suspect a more likely explanation is simply that when someone stands before us with their story … a story that really happened, or is happening … to THEM … we can’t distance ourselves from it anymore. It becomes undeniably real; painted in vivid colors with one particular human being’s emotions, personality and life details. It gives us something we can get our minds, hands and hearts around. It’s hard to care passionately about 2 million children you’ve never met. But the death of one particular two-year-old, right in front of you, can break your heart.
