Biafra, Gaza, and A Grain of Rice
Is it normalization or tenderization?
During my childhood, the people of Biafra experienced a forced famine. Two to three million civilians died, mostly from starvation caused by a blockade imposed by the Nigerian government on the secessionist state. Seventy-five percent of the dead were children.
The British government assisted Nigeria in maintaining the total blockade on food and medical supplies.
Irish missionaries organized a world-wide relief effort to save millions from starvation.1
This should be ringing some bells.
Catastrophe without social media
Back then, before social media, a single photo or video could magnetize the whole world and emblematize an entire catastrophe.
Such were these photos from the Vietnam war.
Exhausted young soldiers in the aftermath of a fierce firefight, their faces smeared with dark camouflage paint.
Vietnamese children burned with napalm running down a road.
A North Vietnamese man being shot in the head at point-blank range by a South Vietnamese policeman.
Or photos of rows and rows of human skulls placed in the killing fields of Cambodia to memorialize the Khmer Rouge genocide.
The images that imprinted themselves most deeply on my heart and memory came from a short video of Biafra played on the evening news in the U.S.
Helicopters were dropping bags of rice onto a dirt field. Men swarmed under the whirring blades. Nearly instantly, all of the bags of grain were carried off.
In the aftermath, women knelt in the dirt, picking up individual grains of rice that had fallen from the bags during the drop. They put the grains in their pockets to bring back to their starving children. Their faces were etched with pain, grief, desperation. Hunger.
For many years after seeing this, I could not bring myself to waste even a single grain of rice. And just the sight of rice would cause me to relive the pain I felt with these women.
Live-streamed genocide
Now, since October 7, 2023, I have seen thousands upon thousands of photographs and videos of the genocide in Gaza. Any one of these is as potent as the individual photos and videos I experienced during my childhood.
Daily, I have read and listened to sounds and words of desperation, anger, grief, hunger, and thirst.
I have seen destruction that rivals that of Warsaw and Hiroshima.
I have seen bodies of children and adults mangled and burnt beyond recognition.
I have seen living people burning in the flames of their bombed refugee tents.
I have experienced a similar warp to my sense of time and space as we do in any state of emergency. And this has continued for nearly two years.
Which is why, when we are still living through an active genocide, it’s impossible to fully feel or evaluate the effects on our psyches.
The most we can do is respond and try to assimilate what we are experiencing so that we keep on with our efforts to put an end to the horror.
Yet, there is an intensifying public discourse that says those outside of Gaza are “normalizing” the genocide, that we are getting used to it or are more easily able to ignore it.
The question is, are we?
Normalization or tenderization?
Normalization is familiar to most of us. For instance, if we grow up with certain kinds of emotional or physical violence or neglect, we are more likely to tolerate repetitions of these as adults.
But I am experiencing the past two years as a time of de-normalization. More people globally are seeing how our governments are and how we are and how we have contributed to making genocide possible and allowed it to continue.
Many people are starting to see more clearly how global cultures of supremacy are baked into so-called democracies and are now turning into various fascisms.
And millions of people around the world are making connections between what is happening in Gaza and the oppression and violence they experience in their own countries.
But are we normalizing scenes of genocide? Are we normalizing the horror?
Speaking only for myself, I am not normalizing. I am tenderizing.
My heart feels more open. I have more capacity to stand in the face of horror and continue to see and absorb how things actually are for the humans of earth.
I am more inclined to actively participate in the creation of communities of care and parallel, alternate means of cooperation. I’m just more eager to reach out and connect if I feel that will help to bring about a new situation for us.
And I’m wondering how you feel. Do you feel you are normalizing the genocide in Gaza, or any of the manifestations of increasing authoritarianism here in the U.S. or where you live?
Are you normalizing or tenderizing?
Let’s share!
with infinite love,
Shambhavi
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Dearest Shambavi, there are stories in spiritual traditions that you know regarding the impact that the witnessing of profound suffering can trigger in the hearts of sincere practitioners…. The one I most remember, although I can’t remember all the details or even the name of the practitioners turned into buddhist saint that this story represents. Its a famous buddhist tale where the practitioner experiences such profound grief that the heart finally splinters into 1,000 pieces which become the thousand eyes of the all seeing buddha….as I refuse to turn away, this is what is happening to me….. Inshallah!
This post comes at the perfect time. I’ve been carrying a low-grade heartache for a while now—a quiet depression, a murmur of anxiety. Look outward, and you’re spoiled for choice: the collapse of U.S. politics, starving children in Gaza, the looming climate catastrophe. Is this me? Am I anxious? Am I depressed? Or is it just the pain of the world leaking into my body?
Last night, I went for a walk and passed a woman who lives on the street. She could be my mother. My heart ached—why is she out here? But I was also afraid to approach; she’s been aggressive before. And that, too, hurts. We’re failing to help those near us, just as we’re failing those far away. And I feel the sting of my own cowardice.
The hurt compounds. One kind of pain layers on another until it becomes a tangle. Alone in the quiet of my space, I sit with this pile of ache like stray toys collected over time. Hurting is part of this human device called the body.
And then something opens: maybe this “body” isn’t just mine. Maybe it’s the Human body—this shared vessel made up of all of us. I can’t quite articulate it, but then the internet hands me a key to unlock my own encrypted thought.
I stumble upon my beloved Roberto Benigni, shouting with that wild love only he can channel:
“When children play war and one gets scratched, the game stops. What kind of cowardice is this? They kill children in Gaza—they must stop! It is unbearable to the human soul. Don't they hear the cry of pain rising not from one place, but from the whole world? If they don't feel the pain, they are not human. We are one body—if they don’t feel the pain in one part, they are not being human.”
And suddenly, I gasp for air. The pieces lock into place. This is one body, and we are hurting because we are one.
As practitioners, we often seek a oneness that feels like bliss—a unifying, peaceful presence that lifts our burdens and restores joy. But this pain I feel? It’s also a product of oneness. I hurt because I am connected. This ache is not separate from the sacred union—it’s an expression of it.
For years, I struggled to reconcile the suffering in the world with the idea of oneness. How could such pain exist in a state of divine unity? And now, Roberto has answered that question with piercing clarity: suffering is there because we are one. My body is the body. If one part hurts, we all feel it.
Tears came as I listened to Roberto’s cry—not just because of the tragedy, but because I recognized something. The oneness I’ve sought isn’t only about peace or joy. It includes this pain. Feeling the hurt of others is proof that we are connected.
And so, to answer the original thought: I don’t think we are being “tenderized.” I think we’re re-discovering our natural state of interconnectedness. We are remembering that we are one human body—capable of feeling across distance, across difference, across fear.
My own pain reveals that I am connected. It’s not a concept or a spiritual goal—it’s a felt reality. This isn’t some rosy ideal. It’s a raw and honest experience of being part of the whole.
And in this recognition, I finally found a kind of peace. Not the kind that says “all is well,” but the kind that says: this pain makes sense. And welcoming it is the first step toward inhabiting oneness in a real, embodied way.
This realization doesn’t lessen my desire to act—to find solutions, to help where I can. It simply changes the framing: the suffering I once perceived as “other people’s” pain… is actually my own.