I cry for injustice. I can weep for a person's loss, it touches me. Sometimes. But, I guess, less and less. I've become immune to third-person pain, pain beyond my own. TV shows how much there is and I cannot spread my tears to cover it or I would despair. I look on, dry-eyed, and a little more of me dies. Despair or an aloof death... I am not as human as I was.
In former times I did not know, my world didn't extend beyond the village, nor my tragedies beyond the neighbour's still-birth and the starvation that is norm. I felt it all, despite the priest's assurance of a better life ahead. Now the starvation is different.
© Farmer 26 January 1996