The philosopher Emmanuel Kant spent nearly 11 years thinking about experience. His master work, Critique of Pure Reason, is often condensed into brief lectures that deal with the relationship between the spectator and the spectacle.

Haiti. Chile.

For the last month I have been a spectator. The earthquakes that have devastated so many lives did not happen to me and yet it did. In the days and weeks immediately after each earthquake, the media industry became relevant. The apparatus that brought incessant coverage of Balloon Boy and Tiger Wood’s unraveling are suddenly effective and relevant. The sounds and images whizzing across the digital outlets that surround me filled me with complex emotions: empathy, compassion and…love. I feel part of the rallying call for unity that for brief moments fulfill Walt Whitman’s vision:

Happiness is not for the faint of heart.

Anxiety, as I’ve experienced it, seems to be a symptom of having the awareness that something bad could happen to me or someone I love and being absolutely powerless to prevent it. Indeed a lot of my endeavors

are intended to avoid bad stuff from happening to me or anyone I love. I would like to be spared from grief, to be safe, to be comfortable, to be happy. Who wouldn’t? Everything and anything that promises to protect happiness has my attention. I’ve purchased life and health insurance with the same intention with which I’ve purchased amulets. I also dutifully pick-up pennies I find on the street whether my efforts are practical or superstitious, the aspects of life that are least desirable will happen. The thought of losing my dad is one from which I run away. In my life I’ve learned that it takes great courage to love and to be happy because we cannot place conditions on these emotions.

Remarkably, as I keep tabs on the lessening media reports on Haiti and Chile, I’ve noticed an involuntary tendency to create vast imaginary distances from these circumstances. A good number of journalists have chronicled the corruption and political and social ills that set the stage for so much suffering in Haiti and the Chilean fault’s history of massive shifts. My sense is that this is a way to rationalize the irrational but to also find a way to keep that from ‘happening to us’. But it will happen unless it doesn’t (especially if you live in San Francisco, like I do). Now more than ever I love Haiti. I love Chile.

When the dualities of living become too much, I try to reel my mind from the ‘out-there,’ the future that is so unpredictable, and all the unknowns floating about. The truth is that this is all I can do. The audacity to allow myself the liberty to contemplate a blade of grass, drink a cup of tea, or smile for no reason, knowing that all that is is, and all that will be will be is the audacity to engage the grand experience of love and happiness. There is much to be done to empower Haiti and reconstruct Chile but it will not be completed with halfheartedness. The entirety of our talents, creativity and compassion must be engaged and to engage them we must be courageous and acknowledge our own mortality.