Dear friends,
I have a friend, fellow Agnes Scott alum, and former refugee named Dr. Helen Sairaney. She launched her first of several books at Refuge in Clarkston several years ago, and I fell in love with her beautiful soul and kind ambition!
Recently, on LinkedIn, she wrote about the hospitality—“the warmth, the hospitality, the quiet elegance”—she enjoyed in a Persian restaurant in Quebec, Canada.
As she reflected on the reality of that experience, she began to reflect on her equally real experience of the refugee crisis both in her childhood and presently, and on “the deeper wounds of humanity.”
Sidenote: just because you and I don’t experience the refugee crisis and just because it’s often ignored completely in the political rhetoric surrounding immigration, that does not make it any less real. At the end of 2024, there were an estimated 123.2 million people in the world who were forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence, and human rights violations.[*] (That’s 1 in 67, and the number is growing daily.)
“Many would argue that refugees are nature’s making, no different than natural disasters and not of a man-made catastrophe, such as war. However, throughout history, the majority of atrocities and suffering brought upon humans is at the hands of other humans. So perhaps the opposite of good is not necessarily evil. The opposite of good is our numbness to the pain and suffering we collectively bring upon one another.”
I am familiar with numbness. Sometimes, it’s an ability to “check out” that helps me survive during a crisis, so rest assured I’m not talking about this kind of momentary numbness. But numbness is not a place to live or even to visit for long.
So how do we refuse to stay numb to suffering? How do we combat this tendency to perpetrate pain by refusing to acknowledge the humanity of another? And how on earth do we do this on some sort of scale? We could roam social media and call out language that categorizes refugees as criminals or, worse, animals, but that feels like a losing battle to me.
I think we simply find ways to connect. I love what Helen says:
When I see human faces as I venture through the world, I see:
Beauty,
Enormous suffering,
And vast potential for transcendence.
Hidden in this observation are two imperatives for me: Venture and see.
Move and pay attention.
Go and watch.
Get out there and listen.
Go somewhere that gives you an opportunity to see differently. Even if the journey begins with simply reading or watching. (Hint: Helen’s first or second book is a great place to start!)
Venturing with you,
Kitti
P.S. — Photo of Helen and me showing off our Agnes Scott rings at the World Refugee Day celebration in 2022 and meeting again in spring this year!
