What if we were China??

What if the US was China? What if we had their government, their society, their customs, their traditions, their earthquakes...what if? What if we just went through the natural disaster that they have experienced? What would happen to our lives, our reality as we know it? How can one society recover from such a tragedy? What if we had to face 50,000 people dead, 220,000 injured? How would we combat the disease, lack of food, lack of medical care, the mental capacity of what just happened. What is the saying, "There but for the grace of God..." What if that was us? I cannot fathom living in a place like China, especially being a woman. I cannot fathom living in a place like China, or a few others for that matter.

What are these people supposed to do to pick up the pieces? Take it one day at a time I guess, what can anyone do that lives through a horrible tragedy? One foot in front of the other, one second, one minute, one hour, one day at a time...

The pictures are disturbing enough, without even reading the accompanying stories. One story is more tragic than the last. How to make sense of something random, and lacking of any and all sense. There are so many things we humans believe we have control over and yet, in reality, there is so little we genuinely can control. When it comes down to it, the only control we have is over our own actions, is it not?