“What sense it makes for these two mornings to exist side by side in the world where we live,” writes poet and essayist Anne Carson in her thought-provoking New Yorker piece. “To be alive is just this pouring in and out.”
The two mornings, in this powerful essay, refer to the first morning she described, when she went swimming, and then afterwards, when she sat down to read the morning paper and came across the news of the displacement of Syrian refugees.
It was 2016, the year the Syrian refugee crisis came to be recognized as one of the gravest humanitarian tragedies of our time, displacing millions within and beyond Syria’s borders. Faces, bodies, and lives were thrust onto front pages, broadcast across the globe as emblems of suffering. Entire histories, entire selves, were eclipsed, stripped down to a single devastating image.
All that came before, all that could be, was made invisible. What endured was only the moment of despair. A whole people were collapsed into a single story: not of who they are, but of how the world chose to see them.
It was the power of this single moment — this brief glance at images of Syrians in despair — that unsettled Carson, compelling her to ask how such a moment could slip so easily into the fabric of her day. A moment that should have held weight and permanence instead dissolved almost as quickly as it appeared.
As she writes, it became nothing more than a “pouring in and out,” one moment absorbed, another released, moments spilling into one another.
Two moments, two mornings, two irreconcilable realities. And yet, as Carson reflects, what sense is there in the coexistence of both? How can one endure the truth that her own life, with its small, ordinary moments, runs parallel to the unfathomable suffering of Syrian refugees?
Her life, a single drop in the ocean, exists within its own boundaries, yet it is always part of a vast expanse, where other drops, other lives, and other unbearable realities rise and fall beside it.
Nine years later, Carson’s essay still rings true with Israel’s war on Gaza, as the United Nations has now officially announced that more than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, calling it a “man-made disaster” and a “failure of humanity itself.”
The moment one searches the words “Gaza famine” on Google, a multitude of images of Palestinian children in deep suffering and despair immediately appear. It takes seconds to witness the suffering of these children. And yet, as Carson once asked of Syria, what does it mean to give only seconds to such devastation?
What morality is there in glancing, registering, and then returning to the ordinary pulse of one’s own life? Can we, as humanity, still claim the label of human when our witnessing of suffering is so brief and so easily left behind?
Should suffering be visible?
The argument that we, as humans, should bear witness to the suffering of others, on the grounds that such exposure raises awareness and urgency, has long been debated. There is evidence to suggest that visibility does, in fact, stir collective response, not only heightening awareness but also mobilizing donations for humanitarian causes.
When James Nachtwey, the American photographer, captured images of the famine in Somalia, the Red Cross reported that the surge in public support led to what became its largest operation since the Second World War.
Yet as the decades passed, as new tragedies unfolded, and as social media began to saturate daily life with a constant stream of crises, the urgency that once sparked outrage has steadily diminished. What was once met with anger is now more often met with numbness, as the world grows desensitized to suffering.
Today, however, the question is less about whether suffering should be made visible at all, for to reduce the suffering of people to a private, individual matter would not only dishonor the victims themselves but also serve the interests of their oppressors, granting them the silence and secrecy in which to continue their atrocities. As Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza observed in an interview with Egyptian-American comedian and social media personality Kareem Rahma earlier this year, “the camera is much stronger than the sword.”
The question today is rather how we — as workers, students, journalists, doctors, teachers, as citizens of our countries and as humans on this planet, in every role we now hold and every role we will one day hold — are truly perceiving, reacting to, and acting upon these images of Palestinian suffering.
The way we perceive such images speaks less about those captured within the frame than it does about us. How we interpret them, and more importantly, how we respond, becomes a reflection of who we are and what we claim to believe in.
What was once a debate about whether suffering should be exposed has now become a question of how these images — and the very existence of suffering itself — pierce our consciousness, touch our empathy, and shape the way we perceive the world. How is it that we, as humans, can allow such suffering to exist, and at the same time, how does the act of witnessing it, of simply being aware of it, transform us?
Does it make us more human, or less? Do we look at these images through a lens of pity, reducing those within them to helpless, nameless figures stripped of culture, agency, and identity, reduced only to their suffering? Do we allow ourselves to feel fortunate in comparison, comforted by our material wealth? Or do we see, instead, an obligation, a responsibility, even a debt owed to them?
Does such suffering shake us to our core, compelling us to question who we are as human beings? Or does it leave us more arrogant, more entrenched in privilege, judging humanity solely by the accidents of wealth and circumstance?
The pyramid of empathy
Just as there are levels to all human emotions, from the ways we love, to the ways we work, to the ways we express joy, there are also levels to human empathy.
Empathy, at its deepest, extends far beyond simply feeling for another person or imagining oneself in their place. As researchers note, moving through these levels allows us to recognize the difference between true empathy, offering what others actually need, and mere generosity, which too often is only the giving of what we assume they might want.
To understand that empathy moves through different levels, that it demands action as much as emotional connection, that it is not a single fleeting moment but a string of moments bound together, following us wherever we go, is to begin merging the two realities Carson described in her essay.
It is how we learn to pass from one moment into another, from our own reality into the reality of others, until both can coexist, however distant they may seem.
Islamic teachings embody this very principle of empathy, as it teaches us that material wealth is neither the foundation of a dignified life nor a measure by which to look upon others’ suffering with condescension, saying, “we are more fortunate, so why shouldn’t we help those who are less fortunate?”
Rather, wealth in Islam is understood as a responsibility, not merely a blessing. The practices of sadaqah (voluntary charity) and zakat (obligatory almsgiving) are integrated into the faith, urging Muslims to actively alleviate the suffering of others.
Suffering is a collective summons, a call to mercy and to action. To merely witness, to reflect, or even to feel is not enough; without action, it borders on doing nothing at all.
It is when our feelings move in parallel with responsibility, and we live in constant magnetic interaction with others and with the world around us, as indebted to it as one feels bound to the sea while swimming within its waves, carried and connected by its pull.
Rather than dividing the world into those who are fortunate and those who are not, into those who suffer and those who do not, empathy calls us to move for one another, to hold one another, and above all, to care for one another. For only in this way can we truly move forward.
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