Alyn Kurdi became the symbol of Syrian refugees who are fleeing, en masse, in hopes of finding safety and a new life in Europe. It was as if we in the West had been mostly unaware of the horrors playing out in Syria, and on the path to safety and hope.
And then, another image surprised many of us. A camerawoman from Hungary was caught, on film, tripping a refugee as he carried his child near the Serbian border. While according to NBC News the camerawoman has written a letter apologizing and claiming to have been in a panic, she was also seen kicking other refugees. I know I wasn't there, but usually when I do something in a "panic," the behavior is isolated and I don't keep doing it.
Of course, we were all right to be heartbroken by the image of Alyn Kurdi, and we were right to be appalled by footage of the camerawoman tripping and kicking refugees. It's more than about time that we in the West become aware of the tragic and heartbreaking crisis that is the Syrian civil war.
But now that Syrian refugees have our attention, how long will they keep it? How long will it be before those of us who think we should be taking action on this crisis become disinterested, or even start to feel like it's not our problem? After all, don't we have enough to worry about ourselves? If we take in thousands of these refugees, won't they take American jobs? Won't they require all kinds of financial assistance? Shouldn't we take care of our own people first?
I ask these questions, not because I feel this way about the issue, but because any time there is a crisis that rightly draws our attention, all of these questions inevitably follow. What I find interesting about the path of these questions is that if we talk about our own people who need help, it's not long before we start to ask similar questions, and make similar statements. Why can't people take care of themselves? Nobody helps me. I'll bet that person is on drugs--that's why they can't keep a job. That woman on food stamps has an iPhone--my taxes are paying for her to have that?
So, really, even if our government didn't send aid to other countries, we wouldn't really be all that enthusiastic about helping our own people in need either.
While the world mourns the loss of Alyn, I mourn the loss of something bigger and less tangible--our empathy. In a world where many espouse faiths that encourage us to love and help our neighbor, we often close ourselves off from our neighbor, and shun those who need our help.
When my husband and I talk about what we most want to teach our own daughter, empathy for others is often at the top of the list. We want her to be able to put herself in someone else's shoes. We want her to understand and appreciate her own fortunes, and to understand that not everyone shares those fortunes--even if they have done nothing wrong.
We live in a terrible time with wonderful potential. We all have the ability to help someone, but many of us are worried about what helping someone else takes from ourselves, and we have come to believe that, regardless of circumstance, people who need our help are not deserving of it. They must have done something to put themselves in the situation, or they must be unwilling to do anything for themselves to get out of it.
Our own personal struggles have made us very cynical. And we have all heard stories about offering money to a homeless person, only to see them walk into the closest liquor store, or climb behind the wheel of a new car down the road.
Aside from fearing being taken advantage of, I think it's very easy to feel that we have worked very hard to get where we are in life, and that we have done so without any help. But come on, have we really? There were a few times I really struggled. I sold plasma a few times. I worked a few food related jobs. I worked my way through college. I had an unexpected medical issue. My mom flaked on me and kicked me out. And through all of these things, there wasn't a lot of help to be found. But there wasn't none.
We think of helping someone who needs it as requiring a grand gesture, or something we can't afford. We think people who need help want to take everything we have worked hard for. The reality is often quite different. Help for me was a spare bedroom at my grandparents' house. Help was the $25 muffler my then boyfriend bought for my nearly dead Ford Escort. Help was a best friend who offered me a place to stay if I ever got brave enough to run away from the abusive household In which I grew up.
All of those "helps" were small, but they made a huge difference to me, and there were lots of other ones besides.
A little boy, dead on a distant shore, tugs at our heartstrings for a moment in time. For an instant, the cruelty of an anti-immigration camerawoman reminds us to stand up for our shared humanity. Can you imagine a world in which those moments and instants stretched out a little longer? Can you imagine what it would be like if we remembered for more than those moments and instants that we are all made up of exactly the same stuff?
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