Don't Complain; Work Harder

That's one of the ideas that Pausch talks about in his speech, and that's something I'm going to here. Not that I don't complain unnecessarily sometimes, if I didn't admit that it would be utter and complete hypocrisy, but I will say that there are some more difficult issues to be dealt with in the world than any of the stuff I come up with. This is called feeling like a chump for complaining when I really have a good deal, no matter how you slice it.

Yes, I went to a women's college, and yes I do have a tendency to focus on women's issues. This, however, is something that we should pay attention to for its own reasons. Much as I complain about guys disrespecting women, the Rape Epidemic in the Congo is in a class all its own.

"Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each day to gang-rape her, she said.

“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her."

Please read the article. Even the next morning, I'm not even entirely clear on how to reflect on it. How about this: it terrifies me what human beings who have experienced trauma can inflict upon other people. Rape as a concept frightens me in a way that, strangely enough, makes me feel numb. Rape that involves foreign objects and completely destroys a woman's internal organs causes the emotional equivalent of a stomach flu. This is obviously not my most articulate post, which I attribute in part to the lack of sleep, but honestly part of it is that I just can't conjure any coherent thoughts. Reading that article made me want to cry.

I need to learn how to become involved in relief efforts for this.

It's funny, after keeping an eye out for an appropriate article which would spark desire in me to comment (nods to Mr. Spit), I am finding it so difficult to form full thoughts. Maybe I need an electric shock to the brain.