Emily Tromblee

Northern New Yorker

The Meta of Caring Emily Tromblee

Why do we care about the experiences of others when we have our own issues to deal with? Often, we face our own problems and struggles, but when we see the tragedies that other people are going through, we can feel some sadness or empathy for their situations. It doesn’t have to directly involve us or be our problem to make us feel emotions toward someone else’s situation. It is part of being human to empathize and sympathize with others. In some cases, we can see the world or nation come together to aid those who are facing tragedy or hardship. Being able to understand the emotions of families and friends involved in tragedy can help us make the changes needed to prevent more tragedies from happening and make our own environments and maybe even the world a better place.

In September 2021, Gabby Petito was reported missing by her parents; she was a young woman of twenty-two years old, who went missing after being on a cross-country trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. The couple started their trip in June 2021, leaving their home in Florida to travel to the West Coast by van. She had regularly updated her family but stopped at the end of August. Her case was broadcast all over several media platforms; I saw her story on the news almost every day, and videos about her on TikTok every time I opened the app. People across the nation came together to find and bring every piece of information on her whereabouts they could to the police up until they found her body in mid-September. Many of us didn’t personally know Gabby Petito, but we are still able to feel sadness for the young life that was taken too soon. Witnessing her parents’ distress over her being missing and begging Brian and his family to give them any information so they could bring her home was heartbreaking. It is hard to imagine what Gabby’s family went through when many haven’t faced that same situation themselves. Even after the discovery of her body, many people looked for her fiancé, her murderer, who went missing after avoiding contact with law enforcement. Brian Laundrie was later found dead, bringing an end to the search. The same is true in many other cases similar to Gabby Petito’s, like Hae Min Lee, an eighteen year old girl murdered by her then boyfriend. We as outsiders are only allowed into a small portion of the lives of the people involved—even so we can look at their cases as an outsider and still feel even just a portion of the sadness those who are close to the victims feel.

There is one case that I remember specifically that made me sob when I first heard about it and every time I see articles or videos about it. It is from April 2014 in South Korea, a large ship carrying students from Incheon to Jeju sank. There were hundreds of high school students on this ship, and most didn’t survive. The day the ship sank the students noted that everything looked tilted, the liquids in their glasses or bowls, even the floor looked tilted. That’s how they knew the ship was starting to sink, but the captain had advised that they stay in their rooms and not move towards the upper decks of the ship. Most students listened to these instructions and that cost them their lives. As the students were awaiting further instruction, the captain took the time to get himself and member of the crew off the ship and onto smaller rescue boats, leaving the kids and some teachers behind. Videos from some students’ cellphones were released; they showed the students afraid and saying they were going to die as well as sending final messages to their parents and loved ones. In total, about three hundred people aboard the ship didn’t make it and five people are still missing. There were several divers who came forward to help find and recover bodies in 2014, but the ship itself wasn’t removed from the water until three years later in 2017. When I think about this tragedy, I realize that I have no direct connection to anybody involved in this incident. I didn’t know anybody who lost their life on the ship, I don’t even know anybody who lives in South Korea. Even without having a direct connection, or any at all, I still cried. I try to put myself in the shoes of those who had a child on that boat who didn’t make it home, or the shoes of one of the students who lost their friends. After trying to imagine what emotional toll that would have on me, I can’t truly know how those people feel because I wasn’t there and I didn’t experience it, but I cried as a human who is capable of feeling empathy. It baffles me how selfish the captain