One of the earliest lessons I learnt as a student of journalism is that not every piece of news that we read has the same impact on our nervous system. What decides the shock value of an event — no matter how tragic or distressing — is its proximity to our lives. That which transpires closer home will hurt us more than that which happens in a distant territory.

Events, no matter how dastardly, that happen in lands we have only seen on the atlas remain just bad news which we gloss over with a click of tongue to express disapproval and a sigh of relief that we are far removed from those ugly realities. That simple theory of proximity returned to me recently as I was getting worn to the bones with the goings-on in the region that I live in — the middle east.

For those who are bearing the direct brunt of the lunacy currently governing the world, the odds of waking up........

© The Pioneer