Power of one

They say that hindsight is 20/20.\nIn light of the recent massacre at Virginia Tech, it seems this is becoming the case more and more in society. The numbers are overwhelming, to say the very least: 33 dead, leaving a campus of 26,370 students reeling from the loss of their classmates and from the guilt that comes with the feeling that they should have been able to do something or should have seen the warning signs.\nSpeaking from personal experience, tragedy often breeds guilt. When I was a junior in high school, a single student and one of my close friends died, rocking the lives of everyone in our 200-person school. Since then, three years have passed, and for me, not a single day goes by that I don’t feel like I should have been there, that I somehow should have been able to prevent it. It’s not a good feeling, trust me.\nOn a daily basis, in our own lives, or as we read the paper or turn on the news, we are hit with a virtual barrage of horrifying statistics, many of which tend to provoke the same hopeless feeling in readers, viewers or those who experience tragedy. For example:\n• 39.5 million: number of people worldwide living with HIV. In 2006, 2.9 million of these people actually died of AIDS-related illnesses.\n• 5,331,550: pounds of known carcinogens released into the air and water in 2004 by petroleum-refining and related industries.\n• 65,000: rough estimate of the fatalities sustained in the Iraq war so far.\n• 400,000: square mileage of Arctic sea ice that has melted in the last 30 years, further accelerating global warming worldwide, according to statistics from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, reported in 2006.\n• 275 million: the estimated number of children worldwide who each year witness domestic violence.\n• 80,000: acres of wetland habitat that the United States loses annually (more than seven football field every day!). \n• 14: percentage of Monroe County residents living below the poverty line, as reported in 2004 \nFeeling a little overwhelmed? Yeah, so am I. These numbers are very daunting, I’ll admit. So I’ll wind this column up and leave you with one final figure – one that can confound all the others.\nOne. That’s you. You’ve heard of the proverbial “power of one” innumerable times, and I’m sure you’re sick of it by now. But there is no reason you should have to feel helpless amid tragedy. For every detriment to society, there are countless instances of people working for social justice and change and countless reasons to hope for a better future. \nIf you don’t like the numbers you just read, then you need to realize you have all the tools you need to go out and do something about them – a little determination, and an earnest desire to effect change. With this attitude, all these “ones” will add up too fast for a TI-89 to keep pace, and the world will never be the same.