Unless they were living near Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945, the people in southeast Japan have not seen a worse time. The have faced a magnitude 9 earthquake, devastating tsunamis, and a perilous situation with a nuclear reactor. Any one of those individually could mark a worst time in anyone's life. They faced all three in the same day. The troubles brought by the first two are still very real, as is the third.
So the people wait in line for hours to get the barest of bare essentials. Water, food, fuel. Some come up empty handed despite the wait. What is amazing about how the people of Japan have handled the crises thus far is what they have NOT been doing.
To date there are no reports of a single incident requiring law enforcement. The people are not shoving each other to get a better position in line. They are not looting stores. They are not fighting. They are not going on TV to pronounce that their current leader is the reason for the suffering. They are not blaming the rest of the world for not coming to their aid fast enough.
Instead these people wait their turn. They share what limited amounts of food and water that they have. They hold each other's place in line. They help their neighbors carry the heavy loads.
There isn't enough space on this blog to justly qualify how incredible the Japanese people have been. So why try?
The Japanese people have absolutely been an incredible testament to what the best of humanity can be.
So the people wait in line for hours to get the barest of bare essentials. Water, food, fuel. Some come up empty handed despite the wait. What is amazing about how the people of Japan have handled the crises thus far is what they have NOT been doing.
To date there are no reports of a single incident requiring law enforcement. The people are not shoving each other to get a better position in line. They are not looting stores. They are not fighting. They are not going on TV to pronounce that their current leader is the reason for the suffering. They are not blaming the rest of the world for not coming to their aid fast enough.
Instead these people wait their turn. They share what limited amounts of food and water that they have. They hold each other's place in line. They help their neighbors carry the heavy loads.
There isn't enough space on this blog to justly qualify how incredible the Japanese people have been. So why try?
The Japanese people have absolutely been an incredible testament to what the best of humanity can be.
A long-standing philosophical viewpoint ingrained in Eastern thought, sadly missing in Western culture, is the concept of selflessness. It is a deep-rooted understanding that life is incomplete without the consideration of all humanity as a living, breathing being, above self-centered desire and longing. The Japanese response embodies this idea, and stands as a testament that all existence is supreme over the self. Through selflessness, one looks not for someone to blame, but someone to help, not for something to gain, but for something to give, ever more so in times of tragedy and trial. Surely the West has something to learn from this.
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