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With our big, open, considerate, compassionate minds.

From our evolved, elite, advanced, educated, privileged and fortunate state of being.

Humbly, we consider the disaster in Nepal.

We consider lives.  Real lives.  Those that were harder to begin with than our hardest day.

These lives.  Lost.

Sorrow for the survivors. Chaos and comfort for the remainders, the rescuers, the wounded, the grieving.

We consider what we can do. How can we make a difference?

Can we make a difference?

How will we know unless we try?

Try.

Try is our mantra. To learn by, to grow by, to make an effort, to possibly make a difference.

Do something.

Nothing is not the answer.

This much we know.  If nothing more.

We send prayers.

That is a start.

That is something.

It matters.

Taking the time to pray, to meditate, to think.

No, we’re not too busy.  Though the busier we claim to be, the easier it is to forget.

We want to forget. What else can we do? We can’t really do more, can we?

We want to do more but our hands are tied.  We’re too busy.  Got too much going on, too many things we need to do, bills to pay, pressures and responsibilities and meetings to attend, work and people and important things, deadlines and appointments and a shopping list this long, and a text just came in and we need to keep up with the latest greatest social media because somehow we know that mattes dearly, and …we’re already running late, better go now…

Wait.

Just for a minute.

Put down the cup of Fair Trade coffee and turn away from the Very Important Message flashing on the screen and ignore the incoming text for just one second…

The world will go on without us.

Really.

Instead, for that second, think about this.

There’s a whole other world out there.

It’s not just “the other half.” It’s more than half. It’s most.

We say we want to help.

Do something important.

Something that matters.

For the bigger picture, not just for us.

Do we?

Really?

So where do we begin?

There are so many choices, too many, overwhelming.

We spend our time discussing, researching, contemplating which to take, what to do, and then realize we’ve used up all our allotted time and move on instead.

Things to do.

Being busy used to impress.  It doesn’t any more.

We see how busy we are but what are we really accomplishing?

We see how important we claim to be, to act, to fill our day but what is our true meaning?

What is the meaning of our life, we ask ourselves in between the busy moments if we let ourselves go there?

Or are we too busy to consider that most basic of questions?

Is our day instead filled still just trying to survive?

And that’s okay too if that were real.

But don’t we see how far beyond…

Survival…

We have become.

We have so much, too much.

This is not survival.

We don’t know what it means to be hungry.

We have not sold ourselves, our daughters, our bodies, their bodies.

We have not lost our sons, our husbands, our homes, our fortunes if nothing more than a single family heirloom that is all that remained and now no longer does.

Our city is not flattened and we’ve not been dodging bullets and disease and poverty and famine.

We have water, for God’s sake, and forget how lucky even that is.

Some days we’re too busy thinking from the mind.

We forget to think from the heart.

We forget the big picture.

In which we are just a very small pin prick.

Look.

We are all shaken today, here in our comfortable world in the land of plenty,

and if we are not, we need to be.

Held by the shoulder and given a good shake.

How does it feel?

May we never know how bad it feels.

The least we can do is try.

Understanding.

Compassion.

What does it feel like?

People have died.

Innocent poor people in a developing nation because that’s how it is 90% of the time with natural disasters.  Why is that?

We want to know why and we don’t know. We don’t understand.  We pull our hair, clean and colored and styled, in frustration. This does not help, does it?

We want answers.

Somehow we think that will help.

We look in the press, on the internet.

Yesterday the press was more interested in the few privileged killed on Mount Everest than the over three thousand human beings who lived and struggled even before this disaster that took their lives.

One life is no more or less valuable than another.

We must never forget this.

We mourn for our losses, their losses, life and death and our tied hands and full bellies and wallets.

Our eyes swell and our hearts ache and we feel a sadness so far from our safe little elite existence.

We make a hundred buck donation and hit send and never see it again and hope it does some good.  We’re sure it does. But we want to do more.  We know we have so much, more to give, more is needed.

Look at the bigger picture.

We say this often. We have so much. Too much.

Compassion?

Maybe not enough.

But we keep thinking there has to be more.

We don’t know what.

Nothing is not the answer.

Something.

Do something.

So, get back to work.

Where were we?

Yes, we’ve got things to do today.

We know how busy we are.  We’ve heard. We’ve all told each other plenty.  It must be true, with our cell phone in one hand and laptop in the other and five second attention span because there’s so much we need to do.

We’re a mover and a shaker.  Each one of us.

Good.

So let’s move and shake and do something that matters.

Now is the time.

What are we waiting for?