Selfless Love

Yesterday, March 11, 2012 , marked the first anniversary of the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in the Northeastern part of Japan. More than 16,000 were confirmed dead and close to 3,000 still missing as their nation mourned in commemoration.

Japan has been known to be a country well prepared for disasters and so many experts were left wondering at the huge cost of human life. Experts decided to study data and make interviews of one affected local community and they found out three major reasons. Their findings were detailed in a documentary shown by a Hongkong TV station.

First is what they termed as Normalcy Bias, which refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. (source: Wikipedia). Most people in the community never experienced a tsunami before and were seen to be calmly cleaning up the debris of the finished earthquake while the tsunami was set to arrive after "only 70 minutes".

Next is the so-called Majority Syncing Bias, which refers to the behavior of people to follow the crowd, believing that what most people do should be the right action to take also. It also clouds their judgment to react to other known and visible factors as long as majority is behaving the same way as he does. This is what happened when evacuating residents preferred to stay in their car in traffic while transferring to a community shelter. A lot of them were caught up in the raging waters of debris.

Lastly was the revelation of Altruistic Attitude. Altruism is defined as the unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. One story revolved with a Japanese man persuading an elderly neighbor with no known family members to evacuate. As the old lady has seemingly accepted her fate to die since she was living alone already for a long time, the kind-hearted man, who confessed that he can not live with the thought of leaving the old lady, decided to call his wife to persuade their neighbor. All in all, they lost around 20 minutes more in convincing the old lady to leave her house. The man continued to check other elderly neighbors as his wife and family of 4 bring along the old lady. In the end though, the man lost all his family and the old lady when the tsunami caught up with them along the road and he nearly drowned himself if he was not able to cling to a floating wooden roof. There were many Japanese who perished while saving the elderly people in their community.

The Japan disaster was indeed a dreadful tragedy but to hear how such brave men and women have taken the self-sacrificing gestures of reaching out and saving other people's lives even if it meant losing their own, was once again a testament to how love for self can be overcome with genuine love for others. To them the word of God in John 15:13 holds true - "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

Let us pray that we, while in a relatively better situation now, do not wait for a similar disaster to bring out the kindness within us, before we express our genuine selfless love for others as well.

God bless.