A page from The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley
I guess it’s not exactly surprising, but it seems to explain a lot of things I’m witnessing in my later adulthood. I’ve always felt deeply impressed by selfless heroes, but I never really pondered the profile of heroism.
When you are fighting to survive, it’s only normal to have less bandwidth to care for others.
That’s the irony of it. I’m by no means a scholar of Thich Nhat Hanh, but I remember reading an account from his early life as a Vietnamese monk during the conflict with imperial France in which he had basically nothing and was himself barely surviving, but still found a way to feel peace and express compassion for a young French soldier suffering from malaria who desperately raided the monastery at gunpoint.