Yep, there’s still a war. Still happening. Yep.

In my life, I’ve generally been lucky enough not to have a lot of chronic conditions. I’ve never experienced chronic pain, for example. I’ve been sick, but I’ve never been chronically sick. The closest I can really come to this is the way I used to feel about being single; for years, I perpetually felt lonely, tired and sad because I felt like I wanted a relationship that just wasn’t coming. I was chronically sad and, to many of my friends, chronically annoying about it.

What I’ve learned is that it’s very hard for others to care about you without experiencing empathy fatigue. Everyone is up for helping the first time. Good friends are up for helping the second time. Best friends and partners are up for helping the third time. But it takes a special sort of person to help the fourth, fifth, and sixth times. And the thing about chronic conditions is, there’s also a seventh, eighth and ninth time.

So we are now on Day 15 of the war in Ukraine. And make no mistake; it is still happening. It has not gotten better. I hear some well-intentioned things about how the Ukrainians are brave, resilient. I’ve even heard talk lately that they may win this thing. And they very well may; but I can tell you that the day-to-day experience of the war there has not improved; it has gotten worse. There is a looong way to go, and visions of some future victory and the glory of Ukraine can only hold so long when the daily grind is such mundane and terrible afflictions as thirst and hunger, or not having anywhere to go. Fear and anxiety are daily bedfellows.

For us, at home, it may seem like the war in Ukraine is old news. Somebody else’s problem. It’s normal - perhaps even healthy, under many circumstances - for us to have a limit on how much we are willing to care about the problems of a people and country that are so far away. But of course, for the people in Ukraine, it is not old news. It is, very much, new news. Every day there are fresh atrocities. And so there is this mismatch between our perceptions and the reality.

And what do we do about this mismatch? That is up to each of us to decide. I can’t fault anyone who just doesn’t want to think about any more. But don’t get it twisted; the illusion your brain is feeding you, that the problem is receding, is just that, an illusion. It’s not real. The reality is, it’s just Day 15.