Across the Pacific...

Hi girls,

I've been cruising off and on of www.nytimes.com all day... What is happening in Japan is absolutely heart-wrenching. I still can't believe that in less than a week such devastation and catastrophe has occurred, and worst of all, it's not over. As if the earthquake and the devastating tsunami hadn't terrorized Japan enough, the radioactive threat is strengthening day after day.

I'm sitting at work... people are buzzing around...continuing on as if everything is normal. The phone keeps ringing. The emails keep coming in. My office neighbour's big preoccupation right now is the late delivery of a Fedex package. How can everything be so "normal" when in a country just across the Pacific everything is in chaos, people fear for their safety and their world has been overturned?

Just last night a girlfriend - who's currently looking for work - came over and was complaining about how she kept getting negative answers after every job interview she goes to. She had called me an needed to vent I guess, so she came by my apt and just slopped herself onto my couch and started complaining. I had been listening to CNN and it was still on in the background. The more she complained the more I tuned out...My eyes were on her but my focus was on the news. It got to the point where I was so sick about her petty chatter and told her to shut up. I told her to look at the tv and open her eyes. Her problems - our problems - were nothing. Nothing in comparison to what is happening in Japan.

Listening the the pettiness of her arguments, I realized how selfish we can be but also how trivial certain things are in the grand scheme of things. A job is important, but it is nothing to complain about when you see what is happening across the Pacific.  Nothing. Our worries, here and now in NY and anywhere outside Japan, are dusts of pennies in comparison.

My heart and prayers go out to all those in Japan.

Flora