Empathy and the Power of Conflict to Make Us Forget

I was traveling during the last four weeks, and it seems as though the world went to hell in a hand-basket while I was away.  Ukraine is getting more complicated, not less; the level of violence in Syria has reached a point where it's not even shocking us anymore; Kenya is spiraling into a level of instability and no one is seriously talking about it; Sudan doesn't even make the news, nor does anything else in Sub-Saharan Africa it seems; and now Iraq has imploded.  And of course, we've totally given up on the kidnapped Nigerian girls. (#bringbackourgirls was nice while it lasted.)  There are so many things I could say about each/all of these, and probably will at some point, but all I can think of today is this:

In each and every conflict, real people are involved.  They bleed.  They mourn.  They fear.  They pray.  They hope.  They suffer.  They die.  They see their lives explode in front of them, but can do nothing about it.  They worry over their children, and panic over their safety and their future.  They see everything they've ever dreamed of, worked for, or believed in go up in smoke.  They find themselves fighting disease, hunger, thirst, destitution, loss, chaos and despair -- all at the same time. 

Because the fact is that most people involved in a conflict are not really involved in the conflict.  They're just there.

Funny thing is, however, the bigger the conflict, the less we think about the human cost.  All this week, I've been following the news from Iraq, and then it hit me.  What is the one thing no one is talking about?  That's easy -- it's the impact this crisis is having on the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqis who were, before now, just trying to live out their lives with some semblance of normalcy.  So just for a few minutes, let's take the time to empathize with them.  And then let's not forget.