First there was the shake that shook the New Zealand town of Christchurch to the ground. Sharp and shocking and timed with deadly accuracy, the shake hit at lunchtime in a city whose face has graced 1000 Bollywood backgrounds. People fled, died and got swallowed by rubble. Devastation wasn’t to big a word to apply to our lovely fair city, at least until last friday.
“Japan has put our dilemma into perspective,” said a friend of mine living in Christchurch. “And in some way we needed that.” She was talking about the sexing up of any disaster that occurs these days. Disaster is an emergency blanket thrown over the scene of a natural event, it calls journos and camera crews out from behind their desks and onto rubble strewn streets. While they focus on the larger picture, interview people who can only guess at when the “Next One” will hit and keep that camera rolling through the tears, citizen journalists are telling stories that hit at the level of the heart.
In Christchurch there was the film clip of Ahsei “Ace” Sopoaga, the man who flung concrete blocks aside in the seconds after the quake as if they were toy building blocks. While his actions caused him to become an overnight sensation, in true Kiwi style he played down his percieved heroism by saying “I only tried to help.” Heroes and Sheroes came out of their houses all over New Zealand to lend a hand, to offer blankets, to open their homes to complete strangers and 20,000 University Students grabbed shovels and started to dig up the mess, even old age pensioners joined in. It made my heart swell with love and faith in the heroism of the human spirit.
In Japan behind the doomsday predictions and sensationalism the same acts of kindness and compassion are also being played out. In a posting shared on Facebook, a woman called Ann writes to assure her friends and family that within the misery is also beauty.
“And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on,and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but no fear or panic.”
Far beyond the reactive doomsday predictions and twittering, there in the rubble of worlds torn apart resides that beautiful compassion of the human spirit and for me that is where true heroism begins.