Channeling the Desire to Help

Hurricane Ian has been capturing our attention. But we all had the Uvalde school shooting on our minds not long ago, not long before which we had the Buffalo mass shooting on our minds, and before that Ukraine, and before that Afghanistan. The world seems broken and, lately, as if it’s at a breaking point. If one pays attention to the news, it can make you feel like you’re at a breaking point. How much more can the world—can we—take?

The very good news is that we feel for others when tragedy befalls them. It’s instinctual in us to live as the poet John Donne wrote:

Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

However, the bad news in this interconnected world is that as we are drawn into each tragedy that occurs, we too often leave behind the last one. The media connects us and distracts us. I have always felt that almost as bad as everyone’s running away from a disaster is everyone’s running towards it. But, I fear that is what we do, running with Anderson Cooper from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Buffalo to Uvalde to Sanibel Island and, soon, to the next unfathomable tragedy that unfortunately will come.

I remember meeting with staff at a homeless shelter where I worked right after 9/11 and amid their shock and grief was a palpable fear that their clients would suffer as attention and funds went elsewhere. More recently, due to the war in Ukraine, I have struggled to hold the attention of charities my colleagues and I have been working with to try to address the dreadful lack of psychiatric medications in Liberia, a country still emerging, many years later, from its own disasters—civil war and Ebola.

Someone, of course, has to respond immediately to help disaster-stricken communities, and thankfully many will, particularly those whose job it is. But, do we all have to? We have finite attention, energy, and resources. I suggest we each think about how we can make sustained commitments to helping others when a given tragedy strikes. Whether with your advocacy or your money or whatever else you have to offer, consider making a long-term commitment to a cause associated with a tragic event and not letting yourself get diverted by your empathy and the news hype around other events as they happen. Keep your eye on the prize.

It is a reassuring testament to our humanity and essential goodness that we can feel empathy for a person states or continents away from us. But we do not always need to act on that empathy or at least not do so immediately. Sometimes it is better to not just do something but stand there.

I definitely do not mean to say you should not donate to charities associated with Uvalde, engage in the gun-control debate, or pray for the affected families. The world will surely be better for it. But if we want to repair the world rather than put a bandage on it, we should stay with a cause. If you have the desire to make something your cause and some resources you do not have to divert from another good cause, you might consider an approach that goes something like this:

Keep an eye out for when Hurricane Ian loses its place as the top headline in The New York Times, beginning its descent below the fold and into the small print of fading attention. Then, wait about 30 days, a month, as the dust begins to settle,and find the stories about it now buried on the third or fifth or twentieth page of the Times. Or, even better, look up local newspapers or the governmental agencies and charitable organizations still working there. It will be at this time and with this longer-term information that you will be able to best figure out how to help and make a sustainable difference.

When it comes to tragedy, rescue efforts should be a sprint but recovery a marathon. For the majority of us who are audience to tragedy and involved neither as survivors or responders, honor an event and the people and communities it touched by being there when the media is not.