One is the number that adds up to compassion

The photo wrenched the world: A Syrian boy in a red T-shirt and blue shorts, black Velcro sneakers on his feet, his face half-buried in sand as waves ebbed and flowed around him.

Dead.

Drowned.

Human debris washed ashore by a surging tide of desperation so great that the hope of opportunity seemed worth the risk of unimaginable loss.

His name was Aylan Kurdi. He was three years old. The image of his death galvanized a global community to outrage –; and, ultimately, universal compassion –; over a problem that wasn’t new.

The stream of migrants pouring into Europe, chasing dreams to better lives, began last year as they fled poverty, war and violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Record numbers in recent months pushed the situation to a crescendo.

But even then, we –; as a global citizenry –; did not really hear the roar.

Then came the image of Aylan’s death, which social media ensured the world rapidly saw. And suddenly, the reality of this international crisis became personal, one we could relate to wherever we lived, one that pulled compassion from wherever it was hiding.

Because Aylan could have been our son, our brother, our grandson, our friend. We could have been his parent, his sister, his aunt, his neighbor.

“It’s not the severity or the objective facts of a disaster that motivate us to feel compassion and help,” psychologist David DeSteno, director of Northeastern University’s Social Emotions Lab, said at a 2012 PopTech conference. “It’s whether or not we see ourselves in the victims.”

As a longtime journalist, I know that to be true.

The ability to peel away layers of a complex issue to one person’s relatable experiences results in the most powerful stories –; regardless of whether they’re about an issue of national importance or a simple, quiet, ordinary moment in life. They create universal understanding that connects us to humanity. They bring us together as community. They show us why we should care. And, sometimes, they sway our hearts to a different place or push us to action.

I’m awed by the power of photography to convey all that without words. Even in today’s multimedia society, in which video is king and information an eternal bombardment, a photograph can still freeze time and force us to stop long enough to feel its message unequivocally.

Consider Dorothea Lange’s 1936 photograph of a hungry, desperate mother and her children during the Great Depression. Or the 1972 black-and-white image of 9-year-old Kim Phuc, running terrified and naked after a South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped napalm on its own citizens. Or the firefighter emerging from the rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, cradling a dying 1-year-old baby.

I remember carefully cutting out that last picture from a newspaper and tucking it away in a folder I keep of good writing that inspires me. I was a parent of two young children, and it touched me deeply, made me feel the anguish and sorrow of that mother, but also the love of humanity and the strength of compassion.

Award-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof searches relentlessly for the one voice through which to bring an issue to life in words. The documentary “Reporter,” which follows his 2009 quest for that single person to illustrate the consequence of ongoing warfare in Democratic Republic of Congo, shows his almost formulaic approach to create compassion and action from what he writes.

But he bases it on studies of the psychology of compassion, one of which demonstrates that people respond more to the photograph of one starving child as compared to a photograph with two or more children.

“Perhaps the most important image to represent a human life is that of a single face,” Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at University of Oregon, wrote in a 2007 academic journal following research into psychic numbing –; or the collapse of compassion –; related to the Darfur genocide.

He found “most people are caring and will exert great effort” for someone in need. These same people, however, “often become numbly indifferent to the plight of ‘the one’ who is one of many in a much greater problem.”

“When it comes to eliciting compassion,” he said, “the identified individual victim, with a face and a name, has no peer.”

At least 188,000 migrants had been rescued and more than 2,000 migrants had already died this year, according to the International Organization for Migration, when a little boy washed up on a Turkish beach Sept. 2 and became the face and name of this overwhelming humanitarian crisis.

A belated call for unity and compassion rippled across the world.

The European Union president recently urged member nations to put aside differences and welcome these refugees in a way that respects humanity and human dignity, The New York Times reported.

The U.S. has increased the number of Syrian refugees it will accept, but also is hearing calls from aid agencies to open its arms wider.

There are no easy answers.

But Mother Teresa, whose compassion knew no limits, said: “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at one, I will.”

We have looked at Aylan.

What will we do?

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