Compassion and suffering

Just finished In Order To Live by Yeonmi Park. Teared a few times, especially when she recounted her call wtih her ex-captor before her trek across the Gobi desert. If she had died that night, no one will know or even care, except her captor.

Although that is generally true for all of us, beyond a few friends and families, her immediate reality reinforced to her over and over again that she was unwanted, that a North Korean human life is worthless.

Reading this book made me appreciate that suffering even in its grossest form is still very prevalent, and that I have only experienced a very small slice of the human experience. It triggered my sense of compassion, and inspired a determination to dedicate myself to a cause bigger than myself. Yes, love myself, but also understand that I am but a very small part of this world.