In the early 2000s, I worked with a nurse whose brother had just been deployed to Afghanistan. We were talking about world events and I expressed concern for harm to innocent people there. She emphatically replied, “There are no innocents in Afghanistan!”
We worked in a nursery, surrounded by 30 newborn babies.
As a nurse-midwife, I have spent 18 years with my hands outstretched as thousands of tiny humans emerge into the world. I can say with absolute conviction: There were and are innocents in Afghanistan, and innocents in Israel, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Russia, in our own country and in every country in the world — in need of food, housing, education, safety, opportunity and love. There is no original sin. There are no guilty babies.
Clinging to our clans, we allow the suffering of “others” and the less powerful to be invisible. They are deemed less worthy of the safety that we desire for ourselves.
The nurse I worked with was angry because her brother was in danger, but she allowed her fear to blind her from the humanity in others despite the obvious evidence surrounding her in the nursery. We must resist that temptation, and evolve into more sophisticated beings with a high sense of obligation to both each other as a species and to our planet.
I am deeply disheartened by our lack of progress. However, I continue to seek solutions, and gather flashes of our best selves where I can find them, in our moments of kindness and brilliance.
— Bonnie Bishop Stark
Anchorage
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