Has everyone else heard about the earthquake in China? I saw the headlines in today’s paper when I sat down to breakfast this morning and felt floored, I felt almost ill. What is happening to our world? First Burma, and now 13,000+ deaths in China after this enormous earth quake? I thought of the war in Iraq, and how many needless deaths are taking place that were initiated by intention, or anger, and felt another wave of helpless frustration. Aren’t there enough deaths happening through famines and droughts and natural disasters? Do we really have to speed up the process with guns and bombs as well?
In the paper, I read that countries around the world were already responding with aid, and food. This made me feel a little better. It makes sense that the initial aid response would be providing food, because after all—that’s the first basic requisite for survival after water. But picturing Russia and England and Canada loading up their planes the way a concerned neighbor trots over to her sick friend’s house with a casserole provided some measure of goodness within this terrible situation. I’ve never been someone particularly enamored with food—I’m more of an “eat to live-er” than a “live to eat-er,” but I love the way food can bring people together. It’s one of our most basic common denominators—we may disagree on religion, and politics, and dress, and gender roles, but we all must eat. When disasters happen, it seems to be as basic an instinct to get food ready as it is for the victims to need it. You see this happen even when food is irrelevant, even when food exists in abundance. A family has a new baby, a neighbor is diagnosed with cancer. What do we do? We come over with cookies, with dinners that can be frozen and cooked easily at any time; we make cakes, and get gift-cards to grocery stores and restaurants. Out of our desire to help, we come up with aid that fulfils the most undeniable need we would encounter as humans. We help each other eat.
I wish we could all just be eaters. I wish global interactions transpired solely within this context—the international exchange of casseroles when one country just needed to put up its feet for a while and be taken care of, and we could all take turns providing in health, and accepting in distress. I wish the terrorism, the threats, the violence, and anger, and unrest could just subside in the face of these greater, tragic disasters. It’s hard enough to live and exist—why must we make it so much more difficult besides? Why not trade anger for concern? Why not violent disagreement for tolerance? I know it’s not that simple—it’s never been that simple. But hearing about Burma and China makes me wish we could lay the guns and disagreements aside… And just bring one another a few more ready-made dinners.
