apathy

One of the days in the past blurry, sickness-infested week or two my Hebrew teacher was talking about how war brings about some measure of apathy with regards to the horrors. In passing, she made reference to a debate that goes on about whether this is a weakness or strength. Being a relatively apathetic person myself - though with strong opinions always, of course - I value any kind of emotion and see it here especially as a form of loss in the humanity of the situation to allow yourself to become accustomed. However, having lived in Israel during the Intefada at the turn of the century, I have to say that in spite of it all, there really is no other way to deal with something of such magnitude. At some point what it came down to was waking up every morning to more news of bombings. The question, rather than "Was there anyone hurt?" became instead "Was anyone I know hit?" Within a year of coming back to America I watched my sister speaking to a former classmate over the phone, trying to identify in her memory one of the recent victims in her school. She burst into tears when she finally figured it out. Dreamed about the girl afterwards, too. Apathy's a tricky thing; you never know what'll burst through the wall, and when it does it's ten times as bad as what you remembered.