Dying To Tell the Story

Watching this movie, Dying To Tell the Story, was truly moving. It's the kind of movie that makes me angry at myself, and the people around me. Myself, because I am so insignificant in this world, I make no difference, and I know no evil. I am completely shielded from all of the terrible things that go on in the world. And then the people around me that are too absorbed in their own lives, to even acknowledge that there is something bigger going on. They are presented with it, but choose to ignore it instead.
To me, pictures speak so much louder than words. I know that I am a creative writing major, and that words should be the most effective and natural way of expressing what is going on around me, and sometimes they are. But more often than not, I don't, can't, understand something that is going on in the world, that has gone on in the world, without seeing a picture. There are certain things in the world that words alone cannot describe, whether it is that they are not strong enough, or that a person can't put strong enough words together in a way that gives the image justice. Words can only go so far, for they are left to be interpreted by the readers. Everyone has a different definition for each word, or at least I do. A certain word means something different to me than it does to someone else. But some things are the way they are. So awful that there is no room for interpretation. It is at this point that it is up to the photo journalists to capture and encompass what those words cannot describe.
I look at what these men and woman have done, and seen and realized, and I can't even understand. It can hit me and hit me and hit me again, and I won't even begin to understand how it has changed them. I know that I could never be as strong as those people are. No matter how much I want to, I would never be able to be behind a camera, and see everything up close and personal, and be able to handle myself. I could never observe and observe and report and observe and capture, and never intervene, and still live with myself. But it doesn't stop me from desperately wanting to. I want to be able to see these things, and live these things. No one would believe me if I said it, knowing me. Cowardly, naive, stupid, selfish me. They just wouldn't believe it. And, they have no reason to. What have I ever done to make a difference, or try to? I haven't. But I want to.
It upsets me that we, as a world, can record and document all of these happenings and watch them on television, read about them in the newspaper and hear about them on the radio, and spread the news out to every corner of the earth, but we can't come together and fix it.