By Karina Pan,
Editor-in-Chief
As a journalist, I’m constantly reading the news. I love being absorbed in information and always having the latest scoop on the world outside my normal bubble. The news empowers me to dream of and cherish the beauty of the future, our world and the endless possibilities in them.
However, this wealth of knowledge has been overwhelming as of late, propelled by Russia’s atrocious invasion of Ukraine. Usually, the more I dig deep into a topic, the more fascinated and excited I am. But recently, I find myself falling into a pit of hopelessness. Every headline feels like an arrow piercing my faith in humanity—each story about Ukrainian children being robbed of their innocence, caught in the web of a war that they know nothing about, each story about horrific war crimes, civilians disposed without a second thought and each story about fleeing refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a heart scarred with loss.
Too much of this news feels suffocating rather than empowering. Lately, I’ve been caught in a vicious cycle of reading the news for hours on end, uncontrollably sobbing at the abuses that Vladimir Putin is committing but unable to escape the guilt that I’m not knowing enough, caring enough or doing enough. But when I look around me, all I get is apathy and blank stares every time I try to bring up the topic. In the midst of this, my trust in the world can’t help but shrink.
Yet, I refuse to let my small flame of hope die out because that’s all I can cling to. I’m not going to let this crush my dreams for the future, my dreams for change and my dreams for reform in a battered world.
And when I look closely, I can see signs that the darkness hasn’t managed to devour everything. Flickers of light, of hope, reside in the crevices that are world governments banding together in unity to provide military aid, average citizens of neighboring countries in Eastern Europe opening their hearts and homes to fleeing refugees and even Russians risking their lives to protest the actions of their heinous government. It’s these moments that I have to fix my eyes upon in order to grasp the little dreams that I have left.
As a mere high school senior living across the world from the heart of the conflict, it feels like I can’t contribute much. But what I can do is educate myself, write to my representatives in Congress and share the right facts.
I put together a website ukrainecrisisinfo.carrd.co with factual, up-to-date information, certified organizations to donate to, templates and guides to writing to your leaders and other resources not only in the hopes that it can aid Ukraine, but also that it will reach someone who is also looking for a fragment of hope to cling to. Please, especially in these times where it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by negative news, find something to hold onto, whether it be one uplifting story or the efforts of a 17-year-old in Los Angeles, because dreams might be all that we have left.