Isn't She lovely?

Miss Puerto Rico won Miss Universe last night.
I watch the photos on yahoo.
Skinny Eighteen year old, fed on fame and lettuce all her life, till she wears a plastic crown on her head and gets to kiss Donald Trump. What a triumph.

I watch the photos with fascination, isn't she lovely, wearing her chain dress so heavy, she fainted and nearly fell off the podium. Isn't she wonderful?
Eighteen.

When I was eighteen, I was safe, happy, healthy, though probably whining about some premature quarter-life crisis.
We spend too much time wondering who we are, feeding on the photos of hungry/beautiful people, commending their excellent skin that's actually buried in layers of foundation cake, reading everything but the headline right in front of us.

We are hungry too often, when we should thank our blessings for being full.
And now, we read the horoscopes instead of the front page photo of the girl's torn body beneath the shrubble.

We claim to be too busy, too tired, too poor, too ignorant to give whatever care we can to those who need it most.
We claim "start at your own home first before looking abroad" when we are asked to help the people in Lebanon.

We sigh and say it's a pity, we'd wanted to spend our New Year's Eve vacation in Beirut. Now we'll have to look for an alternative.

And for this I would like to tell you i'm sorry.

I'd like to think that my measely 100 LE will help someone with food or medicine or perhaps another blanket.

I'd like to think that my fear, my selfish fear of one day becoming a target, is appreciated or shared by someone else over the wavelengths.

In the end, I feed on photos of skinny 18-yearolds and feel content with words printed on lonely pages, instead of looking at the bigger picture.

I saw pictures of waterpools and orange blossom fields in the Lebanese countryside.

I really am sorry.