It is a curious predicament. The United States is a nation eager to help others, sending billions in aid to disaster zones around the world.
We are a compassionate nation, happy to help when nations accept and when people are in times of distress.
Yet, we are not so good at helping ourselves.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, its residents are still in trouble.
There are positive signs, such as assertions that the ravaged city of New Orleans has nearly 80 percent of its population back.
According to CNN, 40,000 families were without housing when President Barack Obama took office.
Today, 98 percent of people are in permanent housing.
Businesses are returning, neighborhoods rebuilding and surrounding communities recovering.
But there are still tragedies.
Still families without homes, still entire areas of the country left devastated by the hurricane.
"My administration is going to stand with you and fight alongside you until the job is done," Obama said while visiting the region Sunday.
Obama said the event was "a manmade catastrophe – a shameful breakdown in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned and alone."
Surely, no one will forget the images of those climbing for safety, sitting atop their roofs, waiting days for rescue.
They will not forget the scenes of families crowded into rescue rafts.
They will not forget the horrors reported inside the Superdome – a venue that once provided entertainment turned into mass shelter for so many.
We spend so much time worrying about the little things in our lives that don't matter that we forget there are so many still in trouble.
The effects of Katrina are still being felt, even five years after. It is great that after such a tragedy, signs of life and normality are returning to the region.
But we dwell on the little things. Katrina, like so many other stories, has been reduced to old news.
We forget things that aren't immediately in front of us. We worry about controversies that really aren't.
We are not strangers to tragedy. Anniversaries are often all too tragic in this country.
As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks nears, we exert much energy decrying the thought of an Islamic cultural center being built blocks away from the site of that horrible day.
The 3,000 that died that day will always be remembered – they are a fixed part of our tragic history.
They will be remembered; they will be honored.
Yet we spare so little time thinking about those who are living in horrendous conditions, forgotten by a nation all too quick to move to the next subject.
Katrina, like so many other national tragedies and disasters, should not go unnoticed until the next anniversary.
Five years later, they still need our help. More importantly, they need us to remember now.
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