It’s raining fire

and I feel helpless

It’s raining fire from the sky. In Iran. In Israel. In Ukraine. In Russia. There are craters in the cities, and people are dying.

You are watching it unfold on a little screen in your hand. “This is awful.” “I can’t believe this is happening.” “May god help them.” And then you scroll past and watch a woman bake muffins, a person taking photos, and an artist releasing their new song.

You go on with your day as if you never saw it. But they don’t. Fire is raining from the sky, and they can’t escape it; they can’t scroll past it. They watch as bombs fall towards their homes and car alarms sound in the distance.

They watch their friends, their families, their neighbors, dismembered and sprawled out on the streets like road kill.

We are so desensitized. We leave a comment and we try to sympathize, and then we move on. We’re numb to the horror of an unfolding war, to the death and destruction of countries and communities.

We joke about war, we joke about the end of the world. We don’t take anything seriously anymore, yet when you look at the state of the world, there’s nothing unserious about it.

People are dying. The world is burning, and we can’t even acknowledge it.

I said once that the overconsumption of media and information causes us to be in a constant state of panic and anxiety. Our brains aren’t made to process this much information, so we’re constantly overstimulated. And I continue to believe that it’s unnatural for us to have access to events from every corner of the globe, but we do.

We shouldn’t… but we do.

And because we do, we are desensitized. Because we can’t stop it, we are left frozen. We see it, we know it’s happening because it’s all around us on our screens and our news stations, yet all we can do is listen. Leaving just a comment is insensitive, but not doing anything is inaction.

We don’t know how to handle all the information we’ve been given with no real solution or conclusion, so we’ve become unserious, uncaring, and unforgiving.

Access to media hasn’t made us informed; it’s made us numb.

It’s raining fire on innocent people, and all we can do is watch? It can’t be right. But it is. Because you can’t stop that bomb. You can’t stop that war. So you get to sit there and watch innocent people die in a war you didn’t start, in a country you don’t live in, led by people you didn’t vote for.

It makes me feel guilty to sit still.

I don’t know what’s worse: knowing I can’t save the world, or sitting there watching it burn without even trying.