"Just because you haven't found your talent yet doesn't mean you don't have one" ~ Kermit the Frog

I knew today was going to be tough because I was heading to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum where the Khmer Rouge tortured over 20,000 men, women and children.  If they survived this gruesome treatment they were packed up in trucks and driven about 7 miles away to the killing fields where they were beaten, suffocated or shot and then buried in mass graves.  One third of the population of Cambodia, about 2,000,000, killed between 1975 and 1979.  It is hard to fathom that people are capable of such inhumanity.  Inhumanity - it's such an odd word since it suggests that humans don't do what, in reality, only humans are capable of doing.  And then there are those like me.  While this was going on I was in high school worried about my hair, my clothes, my friends.  How could I have been so ignorant of this appalling situation?  As I was chiding myself during this horrific tour I remembered that atrocities like this are going on today in other parts of the world and yet I go about my usual life, caught up in my usual daily mini-dramas and crises.   Human nature is bewildering.

As I left the museum I headed to my ever-faithful Ba-dum and felt someone at my side.  I kept my head down and continued walking, assuming it was a pesky person looking to sell me something.  Ba-dum tapped my arm and gestured to my side.  I turned, unprepared for what I saw.  I only hope the shock that I felt to my core didn’t register in my expression.  The man asking for money had been terribly burned.  His scars covered his entire head and neck.  He had only eyes and a hole for his mouth.  I immediately grabbed $5.00 and put it in his upturned hat.  He bowed and said something and turned to walk away.  I told Ba-dum to bring him back as I fished out another $10.00.  He bowed more deeply and left.  I then dissolved into tears.  Poor Ba-dum didn't know what to do.  It was all just too much.  I sucked back the tears and told myself to man up.  If I carry other people's pain I won't have the resources to help them.  (Great advice from my mom years ago).  But what resources could I possibly have to make a difference?  Tears again.  I felt helpless.

So I spent some time this afternoon soul searching, then quote searching.  (After I stopped in my favorite coffee shop - because - well,  I might be in despair, but a girl still needs her frappuccino macchiato pick-me-up).   I searched under Joseph Campbell, more Lao Tzu, and Buddha, among others.  I was looking, not for inspiration but for guidance after such a day.  None had the answers I was looking for.  I googled quotes for suffering and then quotes for hopelessness, even quotes for the human condition from our greatest teachers and philosphers.  Nothing fit.   And then Kermit the Frog gave me something.  He gave me hope.  

“Just because you haven’t found your talent yet, doesn’t mean you haven’t got one.”  I haven't figured out what my talent is here yet but it doesn't mean I don't have one.  And when I find it I will strive to make a difference.  Unfortunately, probably not for this man.  He will haunt my dreams, but the horror I felt wasn't because of his disfigurement.   It was due to knowing he is in despair, and being hopeless is the worst thing of all.

Tuol Sleng was a school before being turned into this prison.
The outer hallways shown are covered in barbed wire which
was added after a female "prisoner" jumped, committing suicide.
The Khmer Rouge didn't want people killing themselves before
extracting "intelligence" information from them through torture.

This is one of the converted classrooms that housed 12
prisoners in these brick catacomb-like structures.  Captives
were kept chained to the floor and any noise coming from
their cell resulted whippings, electric shocks or worse.  

This is one of the cells.  You can see the chains that held
these victims.  Even the sound of these chains moving would
result in torture.  The dark object in the bottom right is a box.
Just a box.  It was also their toilet.  Sometimes it was emptied.