We Americans love to disconnect from reality. The majority of us have no clue what was going through the hearts and minds of of those who struggled to survive Katrina's wrath. Nor do we want to. We'd rather spend all our energy bickering about who to blame for everything, and then go back to our sheltered little lives. That's our way. It's so much easier than taking down the walls, feeling someone else's pain and acting in a totally selfless way.
The following account was posted on the internet by someone who chose to be anonymous. That doesn't change the power of the message. The discussion on Huffington Post had been the normal left/right slinging of blame and propaganda. Suddenly this appeared and took me completely off guard. As I read it, I found myself engulfed in howling winds and rising water. The girl in the article will carry the scars throughout her life. I hope that I can carry a small portion of her pain in my heart to remind me that the universe does not revolve around me. The needs of others should be more important than my daily agenda. And in light of her and those around her, my petty troubles seem insignificant. I hope some of you can find a similar change of heart.
"When I took my son to his guitar lesson, I met one of the guitar instructors who is from New Orleans. The instructor said his niece survived the hurricane in one the parishes in Louisiana. He talked to her on the phone recently. This is the niece's account: A whole community of people assembled in the high school gymnasium to ride out the hurricane. The bleachers were full of people. The one hundred plus MPH winds knocked out all the windows. The water entered the gymnasium foot by foot. People on the lower bleachers tried to climb higher, but the upper bleachers were already full. As the storm surge rose to fourteen feet, people started to drown en mass. When the water was high enough, the niece was able to swim out the gymnasium window into the one hundred MPH winds. She said she saw a one-year old baby float past her face down."
No comments:
Post a Comment