Sunday, March 20, 2011

Shell-shocked

As you might have noticed it got a bit quieter on this little blog of mine in the last couple of days. This is due to the fact that I just feel like being a bit quiet at the moment. I find the news from Japan and Libya shocking. Alarming. Frightening. Frustrating. Devastating. I feel helpless in the face of these catastrophes. Thank God there are people who nevertheless act and do so much good like Cat who auctioned one of her favourite fabrics for the disaster relief in Japan and made 300EUR. Wow!

So after kicking myself in the b... and donating to the good cause as well, all I do is concentrate on my little ‘ideal world’: cuddle my little one, chat with my lovely husband, bake a cake for my sister in laws’ birthday...

I know that it won’t harm or offend people in Japan or Libya, when I continue to live my life, but still somehow it feels wrong to me. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know whether it is a very German thing to feel guilty when you do yourself something good, while there is a disaster somewhere else?

Anyway, while thinking about all these things I stumbled across a very interesting mini diary written by an illustrator in Tokyo in the SZ Magazine online. Unfortunately the article is just in German, but I can really highly recommend it to all German-speaking readers. In part III of her mini diary she writes that “in time like these you have to give ourselves reasons to be happy” – her friend still plans her wedding to happen in 3 weeks, she and her friends go out for soul food in their favourite restaurant... Reading this really gave me a whole new perspective on how people can deal with situations like these. And it makes me incredibly happy to picture people in Tokyo (and the rest of Japan) meeting with friends and eating their favourite dishes. That is so much better than sitting on their packed earthquake backpacks as described here, don’t you think?

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