Life is so relative

Life is so relative. During the heights when the typhoon Ondoy caused a lot of destruction in the Philippines, I was practically hooked on Facebook, looking at all the news and YouTube films showing the extent of the damage to lives and properties. As a Filipina abroad I felt so helpless not being able to do anything (though I contributed to the relief operations) to help my kababayans.
At about the same period I was trying to address a complaint of a resident in a neighbourhood. As a city councilor I get these sort of complaints every now and then. This resident complained about the placing of a children's playground right in front of her house. According to her this is causing her a lot of stress, with all the noise the children were making. I went to visit her to hear out her complaints, and I could not help recalling what my father used to say about the noise of playing children, that "when you hear children playing, the angels are around". I was then tempted to share this with the woman complaining, but held back. I had to remind myself that life is so relative. For this woman, this problem was real and probably her biggest concern at that moment.
When I was watching a house (and all those people on its roof) being washed away by the flood caused by the typhoon Ondoy, in one of the YouTube films, I could just imagine how terrible it was for all those people out there. For those people, what was happening to them was real and was their biggest concern at that moment. I know that life is so relative. I just sometimes find it difficult to deal with it when I live in two perspectives.