Early on in journalism, one learns the news value of a death. One death in your neighborhood equals 10 deaths in your city, which equals 100 deaths in the U.S., which equals 1,000 deaths in Europe, which equals 10,000 deaths in Africa.
The numbers can vary, but you get the point. It’s a practical rule.
For real life, however, I think the reciprocal is true: One person’s hurt can equal great suffering. If you’ve ever suffered a huge loss, you know what I’m saying. You’ve felt it.
This pearl of wisdom is not my own. I got it from the author Graham Greene. Sometimes, I whip it out when a loved one has shared his or her hurt, and then concludes, “But what right have I to complain? There’s so much greater suffering in the world.”
He writes this:
Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.
I first read that line on a flight from Asia back to the United States, in early 2006. I’d bought a copy of Graham Greene’s, “The Quiet American,” from a Vietnamese woman at Hoan Kiem Lake, in Hanoi.
The book remains one of my favorites, for it is filled with life gems like that.
A Buddhist woman prays at Hoan Kiem Lake, in Hanoi, Vietnam. January 2006 | Andrea James
This is quite a story of how you happened upon the Quiet American & on your recommendation, I’m going to add it to my list of books to read in 2011.
The line you cite certainly would apply to the #1 most emailed (& heartbreaking) story in today’s Washington Post: http://j.mp/eLWgD4.
It’s also, for me, quite a coincidence that you mention Graham Greene who, to be honest, I wasn’t familiar w/ until reading this tweet http://j.mp/fbp5c7 – a glowing review of the Writer’s Theatre’s (Glencoe, IL) production of “Travels w/ My Aunt.” http://j.mp/fbp5c7
HMF: Thanks for all of these links. That story …ugh. No words.
As for the play: You’re so well read — I didn’t know about any of this stuff! So cool!
You’ll have to let me know what you think of, “The Quiet American.”
Wow, I bought that same book by Hoan Kiem Lake in Vietnam in January 2007. If I had been there one year before, or if you had one year later, we might have met in one of those Hanoi coffee shops with the cool metal filters that drip strong coffee into a thick layer of sweetened condensed milk. I’ll have to dig up a similar picture and post it 🙂
I wasn’t such a huge fan of the book, though. I fell asleep reading it on multiple buses, and I left it behind in a hostel.