Three weeks ago, Chinese-American author Iris Chang took her life. I haven’t read any of her books in their entirety (mostly because I am afraid to…), but I feel such a loss. She was 37 years old. I mentioned Ms. Chang previously in my blog after I came across one of her books, The Rape of Nanking, at the Foreign Languages Bookstore. I remember how that day I spent hours reading excerpts and thumbing through pages and pages of horrific images depicting Japanese atrocities committed against Chinese civilians.

When I initially heard news of her death, I found it ironic. After all here’s a young woman, born in a wealthy developed country, intelligent, talented, educated, successful. She reported on people whose lives were rife with hardship, violence, tragedy. How could she then turn around and take her privileged life for granted? It seemed so counter-intuitive… Yet, it also made sense. As someone who has difficulty compartmentalizing my own emotions, I can imagine the overwhelming mental burden Iris must have endured from her discoveries. Humankind is inherently evil. Life’s a real bitch.

I always waver back and forth on these thoughts. In recent months, I’ve come closer to taking them as truths. There is just so much shit going on in the world. I try to keep up with the news, because I don’t want to be ignorant. But knowing reality and the truth is so frustrating and discouraging. Sudan. Prison abuses. Israel/Palestine. Another mining explosion in China. Iraq. How can one maintain optimism and hope in this fucked up world? In recent weeks, I’ve started having trouble waking up in the mornings. Last month, I was up before 7 every day working gung ho. I guess at that time, my sense of purpose gained from working for Big Blue had not yet worn off. Now I find myself hitting snooze repeatedly. I have a disgustingly fortunate and prvileged life. I know that, but awareness doesn’t do shit. I need to do more. I need to do more to change things, to make things better. But what? And how?