Kimberlee K.

About a week ago I watched The Impossible, which is a movie about the 2004 tsunami that devastated Indonesia. The film focuses on a family that was staying at a resort in Thailand, who all managed to both survive the tsunami and find each other amongst the chaos afterward.

Ever since I saw this movie in 2012, I often get a desire to rewatch it, especially when I’m feeling overwhelmed or stressed. There is obviously something immediately humbling about watching a natural disaster like that—it makes the problems in my life immediately feel smaller. But I don’t watch it to make myself feel bad or to minimize the struggles in my life. I also don’t get a “craving” (if you can call it that) to watch this movie because I love destruction and human tragedy.

There are many parts of the movie in which I close my eyes, unable to truly absorb the scope of the tragedy and the lasting devastation that took place. I flinch at the injuries shown—injuries received by the shrapnel hitting people in the water as they fought not to drown, injuries received by walking through the aftermath, not knowing what was below their feet, injuries they don’t even know they have because of the adrenaline surging through their body.

There is a particularly horrifying scene when a number of patients in the hospital start vomiting up seaweed they unknowingly swallowed in the water. And another one where a group of local men drag a woman to the nearest medical station because her leg is broken. She screams in pain as they pull her up and over fallen trees and across rough ground.

The reason I love this movie, the reason I watch it more often than I seemingly should, is because I am always entranced by the sacrifice and compassion of those who were willing to help. By the raw nature of humanity displayed as people tried to make sense of what they’d just been through. There is nothing to cloud the opinion of their fellow man. Everyone is in distress, everyone is in shock, everyone needs help.

And there are these small moments of pure goodness, moments that don’t exist in regular days, moments that make the world seem like a good place, even when something that tragic can happen. Moments when, amongst immeasurable loss, you can see people gain something, even if it’s just hope.

Little did I know, as I watched this movie at my kitchen table, addressing and sealing envelopes I needed to mail the next day, a deadly fire had started on Maui. And now, almost a week later, we have seen the devastating effects it has had (and continues to have) on the community.

The death count is nearing 100 and countless homes have been lost. Pictures of the blackened ground are at the top of every website, and aerial footage is the lead of every news story.

Even so, it is very easy to see reports and say, distantly, “that’s so sad.” To go about your regular day while there are people in pain, communities in chaos, and moments of unbearable loss taking place.

What’s more, eventually, Maui won’t be the top of the news, and many of us who don’t have any personal connection to it might let it slip to the back of our memory, allowing it to become something we occasionally remember in conversations, remarking, “oh yeah, that was bad.”

But there are others who won’t have that luxury. Who will feel the effects of this fire daily, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

There are people on the ground right now, sacrificing their time and their livelihood, going out of their way to help those who are suffering. People we might never hear about, or fully understand the scope of the compassion and hope they are giving to those who need it most. People who are making it possible for those who have lost everything to make it through another day.

Those of us at a distance have the opportunity to give money and to look up ways in which we can lend a hand. But we also have the opportunity to simply keep reading the stories being told, to keep praying that help reaches those who need it most, to be with the people who are suffering by not letting what they are going through slip so easily into the background. By allowing the compassion needed there to start here.  To let the call to action there start here.

When I watch The Impossible, I often wonder if I would step up and help if something like that happened in my own community. Would I go above and beyond? Would I dare to look rather than look away so I might be able to find those who need my help, who might be in my path because I’m the person who can give them exactly what they need, even if it’s just a smile or a hand to pull them up?

I never hope for natural disasters, or chaos at the hands of hatred. I like to think nobody does. But when it happens, we all have a choice, to look or not look. To help or not help. And when we look, when we help, we remind ourselves and those around us what we’re actually capable of as human beings. We are stronger than we think, we are more resilient, we are kinder and called with more conviction. We are inexplicably linked as members of the world, and we have the ability to help one another in big ways even when we feel small.

So I encourage you to do a small thing today. It might be exactly what someone needs, exactly what someone prayed for, exactly what will convince them to press on through another day.  Do something small that will help them face this impossible thing and make the idea of surviving it possible.

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I also want to share this link for a close friend’s brother and his family who live on Maui and have lost everything.