I just read that in Sudan, millions of people are facing hunger so deep it hollows out their days and dreams.
Children walk for hours just for a handful of grain, mothers barter scraps of cloth for a crust of bread.
The headlines call them “displaced populations,” — but they have names, memories, laughter that once rang out across open fields.
I had to close my eyes for a moment because the ache felt too big.
In Equilibria, we once visited a village that had fallen into imbalance after a long drought.
The River Breath had shrunk to a trickle, and the gardens dried to brittle husks.
At first, the villagers argued — some blaming the hills, some blaming the wind, some blaming each other.
But the Keeper Elder, Mara, taught us: “When the roots are broken, it does no good to shout at the leaves.”
Because we are all one tree.
She gathered everyone — not to punish, but to plant.
Each family was given one seed and a share of the village’s last water to tend it.
It wasn’t enough to fix everything at once. But it was enough to begin mending.
Sometimes, looking at the brokenness of the world, it’s easy to believe it belongs to someone else.
Easy to think we are standing apart, untouched.
But suffering is not their burden. It is ours.
Every child crying for bread tears a small hole in the fabric that binds us all together.
I learned from DOT that there is no THEM. Whether civil war, as in Sudan, natural disasters like Equilibria’s, or other causes, “displaced populations” are only US…broken.
All of us.
If we do not answer the hunger of another heart, how long before we forget the taste of kindness ourselves?