Close to Home: Examining the Passion of Urgency, No. 56
The news radiates from all devices, like a siren of death, tragedy and occasional joy. Billboards, buses, taxis and public places are saturated with world news, state broadcasts or incidences close to home. The roaring machine never stops; sleep patterns are disrupted as the minds tick over. Sound, colour, emotion and partial truth have tentacles that drag the uplifted to desolate places. Ignorance is the preferred place of many because the sensitive cannot bear to live in a world where they are transfixed by fear. Lives are suddenly interrupted whether we choose ignorance or not when front page news becomes personal. The news is full of other people’s problems, but when those situations involve family members, friends or co-workers a passion of urgency arises. The desire to help is strong; the individual wants to relieve the stress, though it stays heightened anyway. There will always be some situations that no one could have foreseen. One can only sit in the circumstances a