Growing Outrage

Today I am not feeling very hopeful.

I feel outraged. I feel isolated in my peaceful home, surrounded by flowers and smiles and relaxation. I feel impotent as I become more and more aware of the hatred, the duplicity, the injustice in the world, and the reality that there is not much I can do about it. I sit and watch news reports, watch videos of the flotilla being attacked and people being killed, read reports of BP's hospitalized, silenced workers and the insane amount of time the oil is predicted to continue gushing, look through photos of malnourished children in tent cities in Haiti, smiling sadly for the camera amid the trash and rubble. The problems are real and serious. What can I do? How do you sow love instead of hatred, light instead of darkness, peace instead of injustice?

I am frustrated and angry at the news. So many sides to the stories, so many things that are true and so many that are not. And how to tell the difference? Any hatred is bad. Lies are bad. All I know is that people are desperate; people are human and have the right to live life fully and with dignity; people should not be objectified; people should be protected, not ignored, not attacked, not starved, not silenced.

But these are just thoughts. Where is the action that matters? How can we find the truth in these situations and move towards justice, instead of becoming stagnated by choosing sides and arguing over the "facts"? And how do we personally work toward these things when we are but one small part of the whole, lacking influence, lacking opportunities, lacking knowledge?

I am at a loss.