As I have aged, my reading habits have changed—by virtue of demands on my time, the number of things occupying my brain, etc.  Still, there is nothing as luxurious for me as several hours given over entirely to drinking deeply at a well told tale.  Realistically, though, that doesn’t happen too often.  On a day-to-day level, I often reach for smaller bites like essays.  Currently occupying that tapas category in the picnic basket of my backpack is Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood.  I actually don’t especially care for her fiction, but her short pieces in this collection are delights—full of her dry sharp edge of astute observation and critique.  

Yesterday I awoke to the news of the bombing of Iran, the retaliatory strikes, and the unavoidable internal question I seem to be asking more often these days—How, exactly, is all of this connected to a greater good for a greater number of people?  And the more specific observation of “People seem to be celebrating a death, not a change…and that doesn’t sit much better than the unjust actions of the person who was killed.”

This was stirring within me as I reached for the volume of Margaret Atwood to read over lunch.  The playing card I use as a bookmark was at an offering about renowned Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuściński.  In the essay, which was originally an address, Atwood muses about his life’s work. 

What was it he wanted to find?  …even in the midst of the most extreme bloodshed and sadistic revenge and degradation—our human goodness.  In what lies our hope?  Perhaps it was dignity—that simple dignity that is everywhere the target of oppressors, but that can never be entirely eradicated.  The dignity that says no.

And in the end, she quotes from his memoir, Travels with Herodotus.

We stand in darkness, surrounded by light.

By the time I was done with lunch, I was asking myself different questions—

What am I doing to be the light by which someone else’s dignity is seen, magnified, recognized, honoured?  

And…

When I am unable to see, do I look out, beyond, searching for the light that I believe is there? How do I let it reach me, change me?

In other words, how am I helping to build a world of togetherness, belonging, and love?

It feels like that is something I can do something with, can wrap my head, heart, and actions around… And I choose to believe that how I respond makes a difference for myself and through myself, a difference for a larger whole.