Ten Thousand.

I gather the presumed death toll in the Philippines currently stands at 10,000.

Ten thousand people dead. Ten thousand. The figure bears repeating because it’s central to my point.

Each one of those ten thousand was an individual human being. Each one was a complex mass of loves and hates, joys and fears, predilections and priorities. Each one ate, slept, worked, argued and used the toilet. Each one was imbued with that mysterious thing we call life, and now each one is just part of a statistic.

Ten thousand. Five numbers. Three syllables. There’s something so mind-bogglingly incongruous about going from being a person to being part of a statistic that I can’t achieve full reconciliation. So when I hear the phrase ‘ten thousand’ in the news, I don’t see a number. I see lots and lots of individuals falling still and cold, and I see lots and lots of dispossessed life forces mingling in the ether, and I see lots and lots of other people weeping with grief. It all evokes a sense of horror.

But then I get confused because I know we all have to die some time, and when we do we become part of a statistic. So does it matter whether that statistic is one, ten thousand, or six million? Does scale have any relevance to the relentless ebb and flow of life and non-life? I don't know.