This post was updated April 3rd at 9:30 p.m.

My phone lit up with a notification.

“Is there anything I should take from your room?”

This is the text I received from my mom as she tried to pack our lives out of the house my family has lived in since 1996 into four duffel bags.

Simultaneously, my inbox flooded with messages from high school friends who lived closer to the fire than I did.

“I’m safe, but I had to evacuate.”

“Make sure you guys turn off the power before you leave.”

“I love you guys. Let me know if anyone needs anything.”

My life completely changed in one night. I live in Highland Park, a town about 20 minutes from Altadena, the center of the Eaton fire. My experience was in no way the same as those who lived closer or in surrounding neighborhoods such as Pasadena or La Cañada Flintridge. However, so much of my life revolved around Altadena and its nearby cities.

My biggest worry hours before had been studying for a geography quiz. Now, it was reckoning with the fact that my family, my friends and the cities I grew up in might lose everything.

Ultimately, I ended up being lucky. My home was untouched by the Eaton fire, and everyone was safe – but so many people I knew could not say the same. Every time I opened Instagram or checked in with someone over text, I would find that another friend from high school had lost everything, or another spot I knew was destroyed.

However, each time I opened the app, I also discovered something else: the disturbing lack of empathy my peers at UCLA seemed to possess.

Tap. A dining room once filled with laughter, now just ashes and ceramic plates on a charred floor. Tap. An acquaintance from UCLA posing carefree with friends, playfully captioned, “escaped from the fires at UCSB.”

Tap. My high school teacher, sharing a GoFundMe and humbly asking for support – “Anything helps.” Tap. Someone who lived in my dorm building last year reposting a picture of orange flames licking up the mountain behind my hometown mall with “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys playing over the image.

It was almost a pattern.

Tap. Another home lost. Tap. Another untimely and crude joke. Tap. Another life destroyed.

I was furious. But as I thought about this more and more, I concluded it was not entirely my peers’ fault for reacting in this way.

Because we experience the world as a violent and hopeless place, we have lost our empathy – the most vital and motivating tool we possess as humans.

Our generation has been born into a world of mass tragedy. We grew up baked in post-9/11 awareness, living with the knowledge of constant destruction.

On top of this, older generations shrugged off the responsibility to restore faith and trust onto us in a world marred by leaders who lie and cheat for power.

We were told we would be the ones to solve all the world’s biggest problems, somehow possessing the innate knowledge to fix everything overnight.

This pressure has not been inspiring – rather, it has accomplished the opposite. Our generation, especially through our pseudo-closeness to disaster and tragedy on social media, has become terribly and thoroughly desensitized to the crises it witnesses.

But the fire wasn’t some viral, shareable event – it wasn’t something people who lived in Los Angeles could be desensitized to. It was in the sky when we looked up, in our lungs when we breathed – it was crawling its way through the city we loved, relentless in its continuous, creeping destruction.

This extends beyond the LA fires and natural disasters – through our phone screens we have witnessed Gaza Strip endure genocide for over a year, war be waged across Ukraine and more, without most people truly considering these for what they are: terrible things happening to fellow communities and, most importantly, fellow people.

This desensitization is also reinforced by the way we are taught about war outside the United States, specifically those caused by the U.S. or in non-Western countries.

These are often brushed under the rug as necessary evils or as a natural ebb and flow, when in reality, they are brutal, avoidable tragedies propelled and created by Western imperialism.

Choosing empathy in the face of a government that seeks to dehumanize the people affected by this imperialist agenda is a powerful and important decision that should be one’s first instinct.

Although this intuitively made sense to me before the fires, the immediacy and proximity of such a disaster reinvigorated my passion for this perspective.

It is far easier to make jokes or point fingers than to accept the reality of a terrible situation or to imagine yourself in the shoes of the people to whom it is happening. But my friends, my family and I didn’t have to imagine it with the fires.

I am not proud it took such an extreme moment to bring me to this realization, but it is now abundantly clear to me how important empathy and maintaining your humanity are in instances of mass tragedy.

The next time another major historical event occurs – one of many this generation has lived through – it’s worth thinking twice before posting a joke about it on social media or dismissing it as just another headline.

There is undeniable power in where attention is given – especially if it is placed in the humanity of the world around you.

Empathy can bridge the gap between distant events and personal conviction. Do not stifle it through comedy or ignorance.

Instead, let it fuel you to organize and mobilize – to bring substantial and righteous change into the world.