Why does this matter to me?

For journalists, coverage of political unrest proves deadly
and
45 Journalists Killed in 2011/Motive Confirmed

According to the Buddhist teacher Sangharakshita, "The mind, it seems, can cope with certainties, even irrelevant certainties, much more easily than with incommunicable truths." How does one begin to know the tragic relevance of the deaths of all these journalists? How does one begin to celebrate the successes of movements everywhere from Wisconsin to Cairo? Why does this matter to me?

For me, this means I find real subjects on which to focus my thoughts of compassion. For me, this means that someone is out there fighting to make sure that I have a real newspaper to read online every morning. For me, this means that unlike the Azerbaijani youth activist Jabbar Savalan, I can have a political voice on sites like Blogger and Facebook without being imprisoned for it. For me, the facts are hard, the reality is bitter, and the thought food is slow to digest.

This New Year's Day, I pay my respects to those that bring home the news.