How do you pay attention to suffering and how do you respond to it?

Sometimes I become aware of how tragically uninformed I am, for example, I just read this op-ed piece on the congo. I had no idea the width and depth of the devastation there: ”A peer-reviewed study found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then.” My thoughts then turn towards the genocide in the Sudan, then they start turning towards all the neglect, oppression, and poverty I am aware of locally and globally. Then, I realize there is still probably so much I still don’t know about. Then, there is the suffering we each endure individually on both the inner-personal and inter-personal level. It can be numbing, to say the least.

How is it somethings get lots of attention and others don’t? How do you decide where to put your attention? What do you do in response to the suffering you notice? How do you decide when your response is “good enough”?