After reflecting on the article by Heath Cabot, I wondered how a consumer of main stream media must reflect on an article like this. As a singular person, I cannot be all over the world, and yet still be present where I am (figuratively and physically.) It is so easy to think that a crisis or basic issue happening elsewhere spans the time of how long it stays on the headlines. For example, the tsunami in the Philippines. For the few days (possibly weeks) that disaster stayed on our headlines, as mass consumers of this media, our eyes stayed glued to the TV, watching and rewatching every horrific scene and angle seeing flood waters sweep through what was once roads and buildings filled with people. Our hearts broke and we reached out. But eventually, something bigger (or just anything in general) happened and our eyes averted. Our prayers were no longer with Philippines, our news stations were no longer giving us live updates. And so as expected, we moved on. I think about how many people to this day are still struggling to recover from that natural disaster; those who still mourn the passing of their families, those who are still looking for their families. Now let’s put that situation right next to the refugee crisis. For as long as we’ve known, war and political instability have wrecked many countries in the Middle East and parts of Africa. And so we can easily say that for equally as long, there has been an influx of asylum seekers to the EU border. Those who flocked there when it was just small boats with one or two families a day saw what was happening up close and personal. And even on days where there were hundreds and thousands of people coming to Greece’s shore, the world idly sat by, its eyes averted because  it was too small to warrant any action. I think about timing in all these cases. Where all of a sudden when an issue hits the big news stations, everyone turns into a humanitarian. And as soon as it exits the airwaves, we simply become mass consumers once more. And this highlights those who have been there even when the video light hasn’t come (yet) or has stopped. They play such a vital role in alleviating these issues way before spots become ‘hot.’ As our world becomes increasingly globalized, our actions and consumption patterns should transform all the more.