The unexpected beauty

OH, the news! Not a day goes by without us hearing or reading about natural disasters, human atrocities, injustices, and misery. People are killed en masse all over the world (particularly in our part), while others suffer hunger and malnourishment.
Unemployment, abuse against women and children, and chronic diseases are all around us. These are facts, and the media constantly highlights those realities presenting them as the "way the world is" and turning us into voyeurs of catastrophe: We feel sad for the victims and somewhat relieved we are not among them.
It has been pointed out by many observers and media critics that even though constant portrayals of distant human suffering provide a shock effect that exposes war crimes and occasionally urges people to care and raise money, they also turn this suffering into a spectacle for consumption on TV screens and eventually bring about "compassion fatigue" among audiences.
When people say, for instance, "No more pictures of dead Afghans please", that is compassion fatigue and it ultimately leads to indifference and desensitization.
This barrage of ugliness looking at us from every corner of the world through our TVs and newspapers evokes various responses from us. Some feel despair, others get angry, and a few wonder about the meaning of it all. It seems like many struggle with the idea of human beings being struck with calamities for no apparent fault of their own. And they are right.
It is frustrating and confusing. Every now and then though, if we look hard enough, we witness a display of human beauty and transcendence amid catastrophe. Through the tears of the downtrodden something radiant and redemptive rears its head and demands that we reconsider our previous hopelessness.
Stories about compassion, forgiveness, and strength abound in every war, earthquake, or sickness. One nurse writes that she has "often been told by those who are suffering that they find in their suffering a strength they never dreamed they could possess, a strength which seems to uphold them and by whose power their minds are made capable of the acceptance of suffering, not as a good in itself, but as a force for the good which it can inspire."
As bitter as hardship is, sufferers often speak of a renewed appreciation for life, a deeper love for their families, a sharper vision of life's priorities, and a reconnection with God. We all hear or even witness these experiences firsthand, yet we also tend to ignore them or just refuse to focus on them. Maybe we fear that any admission of good coming out of suffering would serve to justify or invite it. Perhaps we believe it would let the perpetrators of evil off the hook, lessening the ugliness of their cruelty.
However, understanding the inevitability of human suffering (natural or man-made), and being able to sift through the hideousness to find beauty is not a resignation to suffering, nor should it discourage us from doing the best we can to diminish it. In fact, this struggle against injustice and transgression is part of the beauty we're talking about. It is the symbol of humanity's will and hope, but it's not the only one. Suffering also opens up a wide space in the human heart (the sufferer's and the observer's) and as one writer put it, the “God-given spark that burns in every soul suddenly catches fire, and love triumphs over fear and hatred.” Sadly, this is not something the news usually focuses on. To the media, human experiences of compassion, sacrifice, and untapped strength are neither newsworthy nor sensational. But they are part of reality and when we decide to tune in we realize that the picture is not so utterly ugly after all. When we listen, for example, to the story of a beaten woman who fled her home, slept on the streets, and had nowhere to go, we might think: What has this world come to? Where is the humanity in people? If we listen closely though, we hear her telling us about the janitor who bought her some tea and a sandwich, apologizing because that is all he could offer. That is beauty on display, and even though we should strive to understand the reasons behind society's failure in doing its duty toward this woman and attempt to rectify our course, it wouldn't hurt to celebrate the essential incorruptibility of the human soul whenever we glimpse it. If we teach ourselves to tune in to that, we just might see more of it.