Blogs Hammer it Home

I've spent a good deal of the morning catching up on what bloggers have written while I've been skipping through fields unencumbered by electronic devices.

It's strange. You can hear of hostages in Beslan. You can catch random images on the TV. But when the bloggers take the story, run with it, get behind the scenes and in the heads of those who are experiencing it, my heart is torn in shreds and shattered into shards.

You can watch a few-seconds clip on the news about children killed in a bombing in Iraq, and be unmoved. But then the bloggers carry the story, share the pain and the images - and suddenly I can't stop crying.

It's at times like these that I sometimes wish I'd never discovered blogging. That I didn't have to feel and experience that real-life pain, so overwhelming in lives that are not mine. That I could forget words and images permanently by simply clicking away to another site. But how else would I be able to empathize with loss and hurt and fear? I don't have these things in my own life - how could I relate to someone who does?

Blogging hammers home the hard stuff. It exposes the raw nerves and grates on an impervious soul. I should be grateful, but all I can do is cry.