Egocentric and human

I'm sometimes wondering (yes, I do that sometimes even though being a mom and a student I don't have loads of time on my hands) how we are able to filter through so much terrible information available non-stop on all kinds of media and maneuver our way in this mass of horror in such a way as to keep being essentially egocentric most of the time. I'm not talking about the old childish 'selfish' thing. This some of us managed to overcome, at least to some degree. I'm talking about the inability to step out of one's little life and be less concerned about our petty endeavors, problems, these mostly not so very dramatic issues (as dramatic as they sometimes feel...). It is not possible for us, little humans, to take the burden of being aware of too much around us, it would crash our processor. We must perceive everything through our own experience, no matter how limited it is. We must obsess about our little world, everyday problems, responsibilities, maybe some reaching a little further into the future and maybe some of them involving somebody else than just us, the ones doing the obsessing.
It's only from time to time, when something really huge hits us, something that cannot be easily ignored that we shake off the state of egocentric little-worldedness for a short while and look around, wide-eyed and shocked... realizing that there is so much happening. There is so much that we would rather not know. Because if we really, truly, and fully 'know' about this we won't be able to find any peace, not even back in our little world of well-known worries. I know it is easy to say things like this and yes, not so easy to fight off the flurry of everyday stuff, smaller and bigger, stuff that sometimes really buries us so deep that we cannot see any light. We do realize sometimes that these worries of ours, at least some of them, are not that big but only when we compare it to what other people have to carry. So often we just stop looking around, get so engrossed in our lives, that we block anything else.
And then we hear a story of a little boy who is abused by his own mother, whose little 5 year old life is full of pain and sadness, and anger, and no love, no safety, no closeness... And then a big earthquake hits some part of our planet. And so many people lose their loved ones, their homes, their whole lives turned into a nightmare in a matter of minutes. The feeling we get then... I don't know, we feel disturbed, uneasy, sick. We feel so sorry for this little boy, for these people struck by the cruel nature. For a moment we forget about our own problems, these thing we need to deal with and so many of which feel like too much, too difficult, so burdensome... But then, we just need to come back. Our instinct of survival tells us to continue with our lives, take care of our problems, stop taking all this other crap so seriously, who can worry about the whole world, right? Donate a few dollars to help the unlucky ones, feel the appropriate amount of pain for the little boy, outrage towards the mother... but we cannot keep the pain, it must subside, we have so much of our own to carry... We can take only so much, don't we?!

Improvements

This one little question has been bugging me for a while now... What needs to be done to change something in yourself that is obviously not good? It seems that just realizing what it is does not make it go away. Even if you do something and you think, "oh, that's no good, why am I behaving like that?" you still are often not sure how to answer that question. So really, can you pinpoint exactly why you're doing the things that you feel have some underlying source in your core being? I mean, you can understand some of it but how accurate is that? Some people say you can only know yourself - it's close to impossible to really 'know' another human being. Others say that you cannot even know yourself and I tend to agree with that other stance. The hardest thing for me would be to write an extensive characteristic of myself. One that would list the main qualities, traits of character, typical tendencies, give some explanation and justification for why I turned out the way I did. I feel it would always be incomplete, always fragmentary. Would other people's perception of me help complete the picture? Maybe they could see something that I cannot? What if I completely disagreed with some of the opinions - who'd be right?
Wouldn't it be fun if we had a machine that would test us extensively and spit out a psychological profile plus possible ways to improve oneself? We could still disagree, that's ingrained in our human nature to question and contest just about everything around us (which can have very different outcomes). But maybe it would help accept some of the things that we tried hard not to see and through a conscious analysis finally come to understand and manage to change the most distractive traits of character, tendencies, fossilized habits of our mind and body?
I don't know. I just feel that I would need to change so much about me to make me a better human being for people around me and for myself. I feel that some things have just gone terribly wrong and I cannot undo anything. I don't want to drown in a sweet blissful ignorance of my own shortcomings and suffer myself for the rest of my life. I would like to start living with a better, improved me. One that will just give me some fucking peace and quiet. Some ease and simplicity, less worries, more joy, a nice, agreeable human being. Is that so much to ask?!

Me

With me everywhere
It never leaves me
Maybe this is how it must be
Maybe this is who I am
Maybe it cannot be any different
Ever

Incurable sadness
Hiding deep within
Most people
They would be scared to see
Too much of a burden to carry
To know me

Unreadable
Not a bubbly happy person
Not somebody who'd pick you up
With the strength and energy
That is so beyond reach
Always has been