Consternation.

Listening to the late Michael Jackson's 'We Are The World' and watching the remake 'World 25 for Haiti' on YouTube tonight reduced me to tears. Not for the first time. Children waving their hands in the air... How I wanted to thrust my own into the screen - take each and every hand into mine and wash away their despair. Although countless times, I have heard the same words and melody.

How often have you heard news about the next disaster striking a part of the Earth's once-beautiful profile? Wade in a shallow pool of momentary anguish, and consequently let the emotion pass? Like how the phrase 'Africans are poverty-stricken' no longer conveys a significance; overused, but undermined.

I know you know that one can only empathize if constrained into the unfortunate's shoes. Figuratively, of course. What shoes? But can you imagine living the way they do? Either to have agonized since birth, or to be robbed of a peaceful lifestyle de repente... Can you imagine inhaling their air, walking their walk, surviving the painful ticking of seconds? Maybe, just maybe you can paint a vague picture. But if you were the one to be perpetually devastated, frustrated with your hapless fate, creating "if-this-didn't-happen-I-would-be"-s, If you were the one exposed to the world - as a subject, a victim, a pitiful soul. If you were the one such artistes gather in a hall to sing to...

No, I can't bear the thought.

This really affects me.