#48 – Another World Away

My Uber driver turned up the radio. That was when I heard.

My parents told me about the Ukraine, where they grew up. The cities and sights they spoke of are in the smoke, rising above the rubble, on our TV screens.

What can I say? War is always awful, but this one hits a little closer to home.

It’s not just the familial connection. It’s that in an instant, one man plunged the world into disbelief. And there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.

With complete indifference to our values, our safety, or our happy memories; it will happen. Wars will be declared, viruses will spread, pollution will damage the Earth. Right now there are floods in Australia too.

It’s impossible to stop it from happening. So what can we do?

Hearing countries threaten economic sanctions feels disheartening and powerless. Protests and changing profile pictures to include yellow and blue stripes feels weirdly insufficient.

But is it? Maybe not.

The Ukraine is another world away, but in a world of social media and 24-hour news channels we can feel it in our living rooms. We can broadcast to the world and connect with strangers.

We can’t stop bad things from happening. We can show solidarity with the oppressed, the less-fortunate, and the downtrodden.

We can donate to charities. We can wear our values. We can share ideas of vesting everyone with dignity, equality, liberty. We can propagate this vision with our friends, our networks, or by electing national leaders who believe it too.

Ideas change the world. Never doubt that a few people with a fervent idea can change the world – in fact, it’s the only thing that ever has (to paraphrase Margaret Mead).

It means we have to keep the idea alive, even when the forces suppressing the idea seem invincible. A worthy idea in the hands of the right people can overcome an oppressive regime based on the whims of here and now.

What can we do when we can’t do much? We do everything we can instead.

Next week: An Error Has Occurred. Press the Reject Button.