As some of you may know, my elder daughter currently lives and works in Kumamoto city in Japan. Which is right where the two very strong earthquakes have struck (or one exceptional foreshock followed by a very large quake, I guess). So between studying for a mid-term, my husband’s gallbladder removal (through the belly button – laparoscopic surgery is so cool) on Monday & the communications with my daughter since Thursday about the quakes – after the 6.4 quake her home was okay, possibly not after the 7.3 (she’s evacuated out until it can be assessed). Some of her coworkers and friends faired quite badly. Others ok. Which is the way with natural disasters. Japan is better equipped for quakes than most places, but the damage was quite extensive nonetheless. So once, again, when faced with a tragedy far away, I feel sympathy, and compassion, but there is little I can do. And now today, there’s news of an even larger (7.8) quake in Ecuador. A much stronger quake in country much less prepared for one than Japan, and already the death toll estimates are higher.

Not wishing to trivialize the tragedies, or the current state of the world in general and US in a particular, I still find that, with another compassion post looming for later this week, I need to refocus my energies and keep my mind on the positive. And in that vein, I’m sharing this applicable, if somewhat out of context, quote from Elizabeth Edwards:

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.”

And my wish for my daughter, her friends, her coworkers, and everyone impacted by the quakes in both countries, is that they find the resilience they need to get them through the coming days, weeks, and even months of reconstructing.

Pax.

Photo of the Rocky Mountains taken in Colorado Springs,  July 2015.