Out of Sight...

I was visiting the hospital recently and I began to think about the ways we like to separate ourselves from suffering. We place sick people in hospitals, we ship older folks to rest homes, we institutionalize the severely mentally and physically challenged and we confine the poor to certain areas of the city. Out of sight = out of mind.

Now, the point of these thoughts is not to question the necessity or value of hospitals, nursing homes or special care facilities. Nor am I trying to solve the problem of poverty. However, the point I am trying to make is how easy it is to avoid the inconvenient and the unpleasant. It is infinitely easier to ignore the difficult than it is to engage the difficult. Not seeing a problem helps me to ignore any attempt to solve it.

Life, as it really is meant to be lived, is messy, difficult, unpredictable, beautiful, joyous, painful, crushing, exhilarating, bitter and sweet. To miss the difficult is to miss part of the experience.