Tonight, I was going to write about letting go. A continuation of an earlier post on perspective, on the conscious act of taking a step backwards, looking at all the pieces of my puzzle and coming to an understanding that perhaps I’m trying too hard to make some of them fit.

But today New Zealand has lost 29 miners at Pike River. And if I’m being honest, I have to say I really haven’t paid a huge amount of attention to this event over the last week. Partly because I am not a fan of mining, but also because for some reason, I just assumed that here in New Zealand, we’d get them out. But we didn’t. And a small town on the rugged West Coast of the South Island is devastated.

I learned of the second explosion and the loss of hope via Twitter. My instinctive reaction was a sinking feeling in my stomach followed by a heaviness of heart. And somehow, in the moment in which I was very conscious of my heart, I felt an almost physical sensation of it ‘going out’ to all of those people who have lost family and friends.

Today, families lost hope that the 29 miners would survive. Today thousands of children will have died from hunger-related causes and preventable diseases.  Women will have died in childbirth. Innocent people caught up in conflict, will have lost their lives. The intention here is not to be depressing, but very simply reflective. Tonight, in the wake of learning about the fate of the men at Pike River, for a few moments, I think of how many people around the world have lost a loved one today and my heart goes out them too.