I don’t want to harp on this, but if you haven’t been following the updates from China, you should go read this.

This is the sort of thing I find difficult to talk about, and yet impossible to ignore. It seems so fundamentally … wrong, somehow, to complain about my financial woes and ask people to spend their money to buy my little things, to mock bad grammar and general stupidity, to spend an hour poking around on Ravelry and lusting after yarn, when people are starving and bleeding and dying.

And yet, I do. We do it every day, right? Disasters magnify the tragedy, but every day people are starving and dying, down the street and around the world. Realistically, not many of us can drop everything and fly to China, or Myanmar, or even New Orleans or Detroit, for that matter, and start fixing things for people so much worse off than we have ever been. I can’t grab a shovel and dig through rubble in Sichuan. I can’t run a homeless shelter or rebuild houses or save anyone’s life, not directly. I can’t even donate much more than 20 bucks at a time. Sometimes I envy those who can, who do, and sometimes I’m glad it’s not me, because I know the weight of that responsibility would crush me, and then I wouldn’t be helping anyone at all.

So w do what we can, we thank God or karma or fate that it’s not us, and we go on. It’s just as futile to obsess about things that are happening that we can’t change, as it is to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tragedy and not do anything. So from my perspective, it’s ok to be lighthearted. It’s ok to mock (gently, people, gently), to plan, and to want nice things for yourself and your family.

It’s all about perspective. We can change the world. We are changing the world, in little ways, all the time. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed by the bad, by the tragic, by the evil, both within and without, and forget that even the smallest things can help, even a bit. My 20 bucks will buy shoes, or diapers, or bandages, and it will help. My little preemie hats will cover tiny baby heads in Montana and South Dakota next month (if you’re on Ravelry, check out the Knitters for Obama group — or go here for more info) and that will help. It’s just little stuff, and it doesn’t feel like much, but it’s what I can do, for now.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead