Seven Minutes to Midnight

Have you ever had one of those days when everything that you hear about makes you think that the world is in all likelihood only days or even hours from destruction?

Let me tell you about mine. The BBC is currently featuring a top story about the tens of thousands of people who are dead in Haiti following a massive earthquake. I am currently not a resident of Haiti (this does not mean that I do not hope to one day become a resident of a tropical island or, even better, own my own) but I do read the news. Hearing about so many people dying and so many more having their entire lives shattered is a little unsettling to say the least.

You can turn on the news or read a paper on any given day of the year to learn of someone or a whole group of someones who have just lost everything that they value: friends, family, material possessions and homes.

It isn't even the variety of things that people are forced to lose that makes my head spin. It's the variety of ways that it can happen. Nuclear disaster, war, earthquake, tornado, fire, flood, robbery, a bus ride in western Canada, murder or even that nice little lady at the mall who says that she needs to swipe your VISA twice because it didn't read the first time and suddenly you have more credit card debt than Nicholas Cage.

Back to my first statement. Some days you wake up and the list of war-torn, disease-stricken, weather-ravaged parts of the world is so long that it seems like the world is closing in around you; just waiting to tear your life apart. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, attempted bombings in Toronto, murder everywhere, tsunamis in the South Pacific, nuclear disasters waiting to pounce in Iran, earthquake in Haiti, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute, poverty in too many places to list, most of Africa (several questionable governments, militant radicals, disease, famine, etc.) and the list could go on.

Billy Joel could rewrite his song and only have to reuse the lines "I can't take it anymore" and "What else do I have to say"(roughly quoted, I didn't look it up).

The bare thread by which the knife over our heads dangles is thin and makes it a little difficult to properly enjoy a meal. One minute people are living life and the next the walls around them are crumbling. I guess that is the thing about life. No one is guaranteed that they will live forever or avoid any unfortunate circumstances. We just get what we get and we have to do our best with it.

We obviously can't donate all of our OSAP to help those who are less fortunate. However, we should do what we are able to do in order to help. And we should be thankful for the good things that we are given.

tot ziens

P.S. 5 bonus points for the person who caught the reference in the title.