There are no jobs, no schools, maybe no food. No place is safe — from bombs, from human predators, from your own government. If you get hurt or sick, maybe there’s a hospital miles away. Maybe there isn’t. The dangers vary from place to place. What’s consistent is that few are attending to your happiness, your rights, your life, or the safety of your children. Whatever the exact situation, it goes on and on. Two years ago, you told yourself it’d be over by now, one way or another. Things would’ve settled down. Four years ago you told yourself this. Ten years ago. But it’s not over; if anything, it’s worse. That’s because it’s no one person’s fault. No one group’s. It’s a mess that only gets messier, and there’s no shortage of blame. The real world has a hell of a lot of hydras, and no Hercules.

This is the refugee crisis of the 21st century.

Though actually, I suspect “crisis” isn’t the right word for it. To me, a crisis is a sudden event of finite duration. I don’t think these mass human migrations will end — not in my lifetime, at any rate. I think they’ll shift, like a river in flood cutting new channels, but I don’t think they’ll stop.

So I’m committing to donating 10% of my writing proceeds to Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. It’s not a whole lot of money, at this point, but hopefully, in time, it will grow.