This morning, on Facebook, a friend raised a question about outrage in response to the death of Cecil the Lion. He asked why people weren’t so upset over the death of Sandra Bland.
They were. Or at least a large portion were. Then, the next outrage hit the feed. It’s so easy to become numb, to let the content stream and news feed keep us limping from one tragedy to the next. Reading it all sometimes feels like drowning. And then, someone posts this:
The tension relaxes. Our souls sigh. Tragedy is lessened a bit.
The oscillation is pretty intense. It’s so easy to forget the ground we stand on — the families, friends, neighbors, and businesses that comprise our community. Here, news isn’t the flash of a match in a turbulent wind. It’s the stuff of bonding and memories.
There is a big, wide world out there, to be sure. It requires us to think and act, to be stewards, to connect and comment, vote and lament. But there are also the microcosms, the communities, the places where our voices are heard every day.
We can’t change the macrocosm. There, our voices are lost in the storm. It is at home and in our communities that we change the world.
