21 Comments
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Nicole's avatar

Thank you Anya. I value what you’ve written and the links in this piece. I live in a state of overwhelm and need to do personal work on creating a way out from under it.

A necessary first step is connecting to the work of people who’ve found ways to do that.

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Thank you Nicole--getting out from under the overwhelm is something so many of us are grappling with!

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Coreen Weilminster's avatar

I needed this today. Grateful for your observations, awareness, reflections, wisdom and writing. Thank you too for the shared resources. “Action is the antidote to despair.”

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Thank you Coreen for writing!

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Jean-Victor Côté's avatar

I suffer from a dry eye condition. This eye almost never drips tears. Now it does...

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Dacy Gillespie's avatar

Anya, I always appreciate when other Jewish people condemn the genocide because I’ve felt the backlash, so thank you.

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

I hear you Dacy!!

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Pooja Lakshmin MD's avatar

Thank you for this Anya

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Sending you love!!

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Athena Lambrinidou's avatar

Hi Anya. Thank you for this. With respect I object to any suggestion that we don’t care. I think we end up feeling existentially ill, get overwhelmed, feel powerless, shut down for a while to keep our own sanity, but not caring is not what all that means I don’t believe

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

It's Paul's words ... And I think we go into the complexities of what all of it means as you describe... still the most important measure of caring is helping I think.

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Athena Lambrinidou's avatar

I live in New Zealand. I come from Greece. I have worked my whole life internationally. I know no one anywhere that is not disgusted and/or sickened by what is happening everywhere. May strong, wise, courageous good leaders everywhere rise. People are thirsty to follow

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Asli Sonceley's avatar

Awe vs. psychic numbing 🎯 I’ve been sleeping with and waking up to this problem of compassion at scale every day. Thank you for this insight.

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Thanks Asli for sharing!

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Jenna's avatar

Thanks for the extra push I needed to donate to Sameer today — it is certainly overwhelming to think about all the pain and need in the world, but then sometimes I think about how maybe today a thousand people donated something, and together they probably donated ten thousand dollars, and it doesn’t fix everything but it’s a much bigger impact than just me and my ten dollars (and although I’m not advocating for tax evasion necessarily… imagine if all our federal tax dollars went to mutual aid and local organizations instead of largely enriching Lockheed Martin?)

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Love this--love thinking of our collective impact

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Emily F's avatar

Thank you again for a beautiful piece of writing. Really appreciated the information about psychophysics. Makes total sense. I read Anas Baba's heartbreaking piece on NPR and donated to Sameer.

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Anya Kamenetz's avatar

Thank you Emily <3

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Barbara S. Kane's avatar

Deeply perceptive thoughts, thank you

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Karl Braeker's avatar

It would be interesting if we could still get a response from Konzentration camp survivors about what is happening in Gaza to-day....

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