Tragedy and natural disaster happen and people start throwing around the word 'perspective'. Why? Because the only way to make our problems easier to bare is to hear about someone having a worse time that you. I was perusing my timeline on twitter at the time of hearing what happened in Japan...in fact, that's where I found out about it before quickly jumping on BBC to check it out. Almost instantly, the usually ironic or sarcastically clever tweets (all thought of spontaneously of course) turned to shout outs for Japan, prayers for Japan and general 'I love you Japan' commentary. You almost did a little cringe when people were still tweeting their lame shit as they had obviously not heard what had happened. You know that little feeling you got? It's called perspective. Things you would usually laugh at weren't as funny, they were actually quite irritating. You suddenly didn't really care if your boss was being a prize wanker or if old mate didn't reply to your text or if some nobody unfollowed you. I can't help but think that these epic disasters, these gigantic fuck show situations, happen to do just that...kick our ass into perspective. You can't do much to help the situation over there, you can shout out 'prayers for Japan' etc...but we all know your ass ain't praying. These situations are disastrous, monstrous, incredibly frightening and sad. But they are only 'tragic' if people don't take heed and recognize. Recognize that what you have can be taken from you at any given second. Recognize your insignificance but recognizing the significance in what you do. People have died, but they only would have died in vain if we don't take the lessons that are so obviously and deliberately being thrown at us here. And recognizing that when the universe talks, we should shut the fuck up and listen.
