As long as we could place the suffering child outside of sight, outside of mind, then we would all learn to cope with this fact. Do we not already do the same with those suffering today?
Leaving unhoused people without care, letting children work and die in mines far from us for minerals that we need for the latest technology, all of this while the rest of society at large goes on about their days is really no different than the child and Omelas. The only thing that changes is how a dissonant citizen will react to the harsh normalities of society.
When the citizens of Omelas become dissonant with the harsh aspects of their culture, they simply leave. When a citizen of our society becomes dissonant with the harsh aspects of our culture, they can go into humanitarian and volunteer work, such as soup kitchens and other feeding / sheltering initiatives
The choice to live a “normal life” despite the suffering of others being a necessary cause for that normality is a choice we all choose to make every single day, and a choice we have to learn to cope with in order to not break under the stress and guilt that comes with that acknowledgement.
Many of us, as well as the people in Omelas, develop a willful ignorance to the plights of others as we grow up. This ignorance is a protective blanket, shielding us as a survival mechanism from the societal horrors that we feel powerless to change.
Others of us, as in Omelas, forgo ignorance to instead relish in cruelty and blame, seeing those who are suffering as the problem in it of themselves. These are those who build anti-homeless structures, who beat the child at feeding time in Omelas, who attack those living without a home just because they can get away with it, and those who hide behind the beliefs of karma and religions that one must have sinned to be worthy of such punishment.
It seems there is no other way to cope with this suffering aside from ignorance, or getting up and taking action against this suffering.
Even if you were to acknowledge all of this as true, are you going to change anything about your life, about your choices, or even consider how those choices are built upon and lead to the suffering of others?