A boy showed up to our surf program every day for three weeks.
Walking from the township to the beach. Every. Single. Day.
With a toe that looked like cauliflower. A soccer injury that had gone untreated since mid-January. A clinic had sent him home with an ointment. He kept coming back to us.
When we finally got a private doctor to look at him, she didn't blink. "Get him to hospital now." He needed IV medication just to save his toe.
Three weeks. Walking on it. Not a word of complaint.
What struck me wasn't his toughness. It was how normal it all seemed to him. Suffering was just part of the background. The absence of care — normal. The broken system — normal.
We've built a society where the abnormal has become so routine that children stop noticing it.
That's the most dangerous thing of all.
Not the suffering itself. The acceptance of it.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2019/02/13/aberrant-normality/
Walking from the township to the beach. Every. Single. Day.
With a toe that looked like cauliflower. A soccer injury that had gone untreated since mid-January. A clinic had sent him home with an ointment. He kept coming back to us.
When we finally got a private doctor to look at him, she didn't blink. "Get him to hospital now." He needed IV medication just to save his toe.
Three weeks. Walking on it. Not a word of complaint.
What struck me wasn't his toughness. It was how normal it all seemed to him. Suffering was just part of the background. The absence of care — normal. The broken system — normal.
We've built a society where the abnormal has become so routine that children stop noticing it.
That's the most dangerous thing of all.
Not the suffering itself. The acceptance of it.
https://vryfokkenou.com/2019/02/13/aberrant-normality/
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