Within an hour today I had read about human trafficking, the problems of refugee camps for Somalians, those of Mongolia, where the cold as well as changing times force people with no skills to move to the city and one family of 6 in Ulan Bator lived in something the author called “a crawl space” considering themselves lucky because some in the new slums there were worse off. I also read that 15% of the world’s population has a disability, anything from blindness or loss of limb to chronic aliments, and saw a picture of a railway station in North Korea, where the locomotive was so old, so rusty, that in western countries it would have long been relegated to the junk heap. By the time I received an email that a young neighbor had to move out and find a cheaper apartment because her wealthy parents had had a reversal and were no longer able to finance her graduate studies, my reaction was rather muted. Her circumstances speak of difficulties and even sacrifice but in context of the millions I’d been reading about, and the millions I’ve read about on other days, she seemed fortunate to be outside the crux of human suffering. And of course so am I.