Fighting compassion fatigue. What would Mark Twain say?
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 01/14/2024 - 7:26pm
Job 7:1 tells us, “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.” That was a sagacious perception away back when, but it no longer has to be that way in this 21st century.
The Hundred Years War between England and France lasted a century only because the combatants used battleaxes and crossbows to dispatch each other, whereas our next big war will be over and completed in hours, not days, weeks, months, years or centuries.
Today it appears neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are willing to let the other side rule, so a two-state solution seems to be the least-worst option to keep them from a Hobbesian state of mind.
With a tear in our eye we remember Golda Meir’s words of not that long ago, “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” And while I’m thinking about it, nobody who believed in the Frog Prince ever started a war, yet both sides in every war believe steadfastly that God is on their side.
About Russia and Ukraine we can talk another day. Tired of it all? Me too. We are all suffering from compassion fatigue. Psychologists call it empathic distress, or the hurting for others while feeling unable to help. We often fight these vexations by withdrawing and escaping life’s every misery with drugs or alcohol. Internalizing the daily news will make one weary of his earthly lot.
“Bartender, please make that a straight shot with a beer chaser.”
Yet in spite of it all, optimism remains America’s defining trait. “God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!” Millions of random acts of kindness transpire each and every day that don’t make the evening news or morning papers.
Though it won’t happen tomorrow, let’s hope Carl Sandburg was right when he predicted, “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.” McAvoy’s corollary? “Sometime there will be a schoolyard fight that nobody will gather around.”
As is our custom, we leave the last word to Mark Twain:
“You perceive, man has made continual progress: Cain did his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and generals; the Christians added guns and gunpowder; two centuries from now man will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without the Christian civilization, war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time.”
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to step outside and cast my annual howl at the wolf moon.
— For more than 35 years, in more than 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American." Go here for the spoken word version of this and other columns.
