...10 minutes ago, i went to answer our doorbell, which was ringing insistently.  i had been in my room, reading and generally doing nothing of consequence when the doorbell started going nuts.

 

our house is a split level, so i climbed the stairs from my room, and rounded the corner to climb the next set, and saw the lights reflecting off the walls already: blue and white and red...muted through the curtains, but still panicked.  they only got brighter as i came past the living room and towards the door.

 

my heart stopped and my mind went into a mental fetal position...trying to stave off the ugly thoughts that kept flashing through my brain: someone is hurt.  someone is dead.  someone is here to tell you about it.  the someone on the other side of the door is going to wreck your entire world. this cannot happen again. do not open the door. pretend like you're not home. wake up...

 

i opened the door and the doorbell stopped ringing and my neighbour-to-the-right was standing there.  there was a paramedic's truck parked in front of our house, a fire truck at the top of the court, and an ambulance parked in the driveway, next door...to the left.  i have never been so relieved. 

 

immediately following that, i felt awful for it...but it's true...i felt better knowing that those lights weren't flashing for someone in my family. our other neighbours were out on their driveways, curious and concerned - hopefully not in that order.  a stretcher eventually was loaded into the back of the ambulance in the driveway and all three vehicles drove off.  i pray that everything is ok...i pray that the family is ok, and that everyone will check out in good health...but i can't help but be thankful that it's not my family.  does that make me a horrible person? 

 

where do my problems stop and theirs begin...?  it's so much easier to forget about when it's not your pain. how far does empathy go? not too sound grotesquely grandiose, but how much is this one, isolated situation indicative of global attitudes to larger-scale problems?  it seems we don't have to look much further than recent news headlines to confirm those suspicions...

 

...so what now?