Tsunami: Bringing me out of sabbatical

I have missed Sampadhki a great deal, throughout these years there was just so much going on around the world and I wanted to get on the computer and write my thoughts and ideas and share them with you all. But my kids, who I love dearly, would always take first preference. Now though they are growing up, my eldest will be four next month, and I find I have time and I just couldn’t resist writing after the dreadful, heartbreaking event that has occurred recently in our world: Tsunami. Tsunami is a Japanese word, formed by tsu, meaning harbor or port, and nami, meaning wave or sea. The dictionary defines a tsunami as a ‘seismic disturbance of the ocean or
a great sea wave produced by submarine earth movement or volcanic eruption.’ I for one can’t even comprehend an earthquake of this magnitude. I remember when we were living in California and hearing about Earthquakes in the seven ranges being horrendous but to imagine one that hit nine on the Richter scale is beyond me.

Maybe this magnitude and certainly the devastation that occurred is a reminder to us all how powerful and controlling nature is. We live in a world where we tend to forget that no matter what we build or how we rearrange the world, partitioning it by nations, cities, villages, for Mother Nature we are all one. She is the one that can truly have the last say. Despite her power and strength I think this disaster has made many question their faith. How can God allow such a disaster to occur? As the toll rises, and with more than a third of those effected being kids, it seems hard not to question Godâs motives. Why would he do this to innocent children? As I see my kids playing and enjoying their safe environment here, I canât help but imagine what was going through the minds of those children as those waves overpowered them not giving them even a slight chance of survival. The images are still haunting to watch. The bodies laying in rows almost remind me of how insignificant we are really as life forms. It’s so true that in one split second He can take away our lives and our futures. I know many will argue that we will get over this, not forgetting but moving forward because that is what is in our nature. Truly it is as we see how these mass burials are taking place so as to allow those that are left behind to be given a chance to survive. Is this the loving God that we know? Is he the one that not only hits us witha disaster but then lingers us with more suffering even after the fact?

On the other hand, Iâm sure many will argue that disasters occur and that is part of life. Nature has struck in the past and will continue to in the future. But what has emerged from this disaster is a sense of how small the world is. Ma
ybe God wanted people to remember the fundamental fact that we are all the same. As donations pour in help is being administered from individuals from all around the globe, you canât help but think that we can truly be so caring. It’s touching to see that in a world where hatred breeds in full force, humanity is thrusting through. I can only hope that we all can learn and take away from this that life is so precious. Itâs sad that as we watch Nature destroy homes and lands we open our hearts, but daily around the world there are wars and destruction going on by man that no-one seems to want to put an end to.

It almost seems so silly to see man attempting to kill and destroy by spending trillions on weapons of destruction, when what Tsunami just showed us is that Mother Nature can do more damage than we can ever imagine. In a world were warfare and struggle over land and resources is so adamant, Tsunami proved that those lines are irrelevant.

I remember as a kids looking at those very old maps were nations that exist today were not present. Likewise in a few hundred years the maps may be completely different again. Why then do we have to spend so much time and energy on fighting over these issues instead of putting those resources to trying to prevent such disasters from occurring in the future? There were actually predictions made before this disastrous event but there was no means of distributing the information. It saddens me to think that had we had a better warning system in tack, may be the destruction would have been somewhat lower. Maybe just maybe those parents who lost their children would have had the opportunity to aid those innocent souls to safety. As Teng-fong Wong a geophysicist at the State of University of New York-Stony Brook, stated ‘It’s a people problem, not a technology problem. . . Governments just have to ooperate.’

Mr. Wong is so accurate in this assumption, since had the monitors been in place – monitors that have been around for decades ‘ maybe just maybe the tolls wouldn’t keep rising today. I just hope as these images of horror keep bombarding us we truly can learn a valuable lesson about life and death. My hope for my people of this world is truly to work in harmony. As we get ready to welcome 2005, the hope is there that along with a change in the year can come a change in our perception about each other. Maybe I am an optimist but I do hope and pray that there will be a day, and hopefully really soon, where we can at least stop all disasters creating by man and maybe spend more time and energy on those created by nature. I know we can not prevent earthquakes, hurricanes or other natural disasters but we can and do have the means to at least predict them to a certain degree of error.