Everyone knows the saying about making mountains out of mole hills. Its all about keeping things in proportion, whether its refusing to see an innocent remark as a slanderous insult or accepting that a broken finger nail isn’t life threatening. But the saying can only really apply to yourself. Just because you can’t see someone else’s mountain, it doesn’t mean its not there.

You might cut yourself and say “I’ll survive” but if you suffer from haemophilia any cut is potentially life threatening. You might say to someone “cheer up, it might never happen” but if the bottom has fallen out of their world, it already has. And like many sayings its ‘a’ truth but not ‘the’ truth. In other words its OK as far as it goes. Not only do we overestimate the scope of our wisdom we also underestimate our tendency to pigeon hole. Someone will say “boys will be boys” as a way of dismissing laddish behaviour but when that behaviour becomes antisocial its not acceptable. And what that person has in mind when they say this may be widely different from the picture that’s conjured up in yours; it can be quite subjective and narrow.

When we see the suffering of the people of Haiti it puts our problems into perspective. A creaky floor board is just an annoyance; the 15 minute wait at the post office is a minor inconvenience. And when we compare what we have to what they have its pretty staggering. But here there is a danger over simplification and pigeon holing. We can be so bowled over with sympathy that all we see are the differences between their troubles and ours; their wealth and ours.

We all have the gift of life but when that is all you have it can seem much more precious. For all your wealth, if you don’t value your life, what you have is worthless. And which is worse: a husband losing his wife to an earthquake or a mother losing her son to a hit and run?
If there is good to come from this disaster it won’t be that we suddenly get a conscience, it will be that we will not forget that there are real people on that island, that we are more similar than we are different, that wealth is relative and that we need to flatten our mountains and mole hills and anything else that separates us.