This Haiti tragedy is as real and as terrible as it gets, and I find myself wondering how to do it: How do we feel and show strength and resolve when there is so much soul-bruising death and destruction? The images are totally heart wrenching, like the dad my age holding his dead daughter my daughters age, and the look on his face…
So I wonder and I search for that middle ground. Obviously it does no good to cry and cry and cry — there is plenty of room for the real victims to do that. What they need now is our help, our strength to get them through this. The dead are gone.
The reason I ask this important question is because, as someone pursuing greatness, I need to know what people would assume of me in such a situation. A good place to start is my family and children. They need to see me as someone who 1) Cares and will not turn a blind eye, 2) Acknowledges the horrible loss of life and the sadness that comes with it, but 3) Recognizes that life goes must go on and people must pull through and rebuild.
All three of those are vital. In fact, for simplicty sake, you could combine 1 and 2, then say Acknowledge and Do Something. I suppose that what makes us human. We cry but we also heal. We fall but we also get back up.
That is a condition of goodness, of greatness. The ability to feel deeply without hiding from truth, then turn the pain into a fight to overcome it. All of this, of course, for the sake of others.
Obama said it. “Haiti, you will not be forsaken. You will not be forgotten. We are here for you.”