I am supposed to be playing tag today. I don't feel like it. I will get to that tomorrow. But today I am not feeling witty and lighthearted.
Yesterday in my adopted home, this lush and vibrant city that I love, six people were shot and killed. It started yesterday morning when a man walked into a cafe where he was a regular and started shooting people. Then he continued downtown where he shot and killed a woman and stole her car. Police caught up with him across town and then he knelt down and shot himself. It took all day, while the rest of us went about our business, checking occasionally for updates and wondering what all this was about.
This has already started the political shouting match about gun control. I don't want to enter that fray. I have my own opinions about it, but they don't matter that much. I don't want to talk about guns. I want to talk about the finger that pulled the trigger. The mind that told that finger that was its only choice.
The shooter was known to be unstable and very depressed. His own brother said "We should have seen this coming." The other patrons at the cafe where he was a regular feared of him and for him. He was, by all accounts, an unhappy man. Ostracized and out of sorts. He felt on the fringe of things and the killings were of his perceived enemies. I do not blame the victims. I do not blame the people close to him. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions. He took his unhappiness, his mental illness, his feeling of otherness and made a series of very bad choices. He could have done otherwise. I will judge and say he should have done otherwise. There are plenty of profoundly depressed people who do not choose to kill others. No, I do not blame the victims.
What I do is wonder. I wonder if he could have been helped. I wonder if any of the people who knew him had tried, to no avail. I don't know. I wonder that we live in a society that drives some people so far out of it that they are driven out of their minds. I wonder if it's not the other way around. Perhaps they are already out of their minds and do the driving out themselves? I wonder if this is a trend that will continue.
It is no secret our country is collectively unhappy. Our economy is floundering. There are deepening divides along economic, ideological, racial, sexual, spiritual and just about every other kind of lines. We are a people afraid and nervous. We feel like we have been cheated out of something and that someone must be to blame. Some blame the rich, some the poor, some the military, some the corporations. We are tripping through these divided lines, weary from navigating what might or might not offend. It all becomes so much noise in the background and we are left with a collective migraine. A low, constant buzzing, inescapable pain and over-sensitivity. We want it to stop and nothing seems to help. Someone must be responsible. Someone must be to blame. Are we blaming ourselves? Should we?
Humans are pack animals. Like wolves. We are made to coexist, look after one another. When a weak or broken pack member suffers, the whole pack suffers. Wolves are sometimes perceived as dangerous animals, but there is no recorded case of a healthy wolf ever killing someone. It is the lone wolf, the wolf that is disconnected from its support system, detached through illness or injury or starvation who attacks. Sometimes it seems as if we are becoming a society of lone wolves. Our connections to other people are becoming more intangible. Our support systems disintegrating. We brave the elements, the maelstrom of images and messages that rain down on us relentlessly telling us we are not enough, that other people have it better, do it better, feel better. The brambles of want and need snag at our pelts as we hurtle through the forest. The small and the weak and the old are left untended, barked at for feeling entitled, disenfranchised, ignored.
Human suffering is ugly. Sometimes it smells bad. Sometimes it's frightening. Sometimes it sits next to us in human form in a cafe and we move away, uncomfortable and unable to enjoy our lattes. We bottle our own suffering up and hide it away or we splash it about, obnoxious and off-putting while well-meaning people nod and smile, pat-pat, there-there, and go on about their business. We are so caught up in our rapids of busy-ness that to slow down and listen is to risk being swept away, drowning. So we holler a brief hello from our life boats and continue on. I am a socialist. I am a grass roots socialist. I believe that by helping the lowest rungs of our society - children, the homeless, the mentally ill, the elderly - we elevate the whole society. I know not everyone feels this way. I know what it is to be focused elsewhere, to be frightened, to be exhausted, to be discouraged. I know how it feels to get out of the life boat and wade upstream to reach out a hand and have it slapped away or have it accepted only to be left standing soaking wet while someone makes off with my raft without so much as a "how do you do." I don't know how it feels to go out for a cup of coffee and get shot. I don't know how it feels to want to rob another person of life.
When things like this happen, the instinct is to hide. To lock the doors and keep our loved ones close. To shut out the rest of the world and its ugliness and suffering. But sometimes I wonder how that is any different from what we do on any other day. I am a realist, too. I know there will always be people who become unhinged, make unconscionable choices, hurt and destroy. But I wonder. I wonder if we need more locks, more controls, more fear. Or if, perhaps, we would have fewer feel the need to vent and rage if we threw our doors open and listened. If we watched and we helped and we got involved. If we realized that regardless of the packaging, we are all just humans who suffer basically the same emotions, share basically the same needs, the same fears, the same desires. Would it hurt your feelings if someone crossed the street to avoid you? Would it wound you just a little bit if someone wrinkled their nose and walked away when you tried to strike up a conversation? What if you asked for help and people just flowed past, consciously avoiding eye contact? What if you were sick and your society determined that you did not deserve to be well?
None of this excuses the actions a desperate, sick man decided to take yesterday. None of this will bring back the lives of the people who were just out for a cup of coffee, getting into their cars, driving down the street. These innocent people who had unwittingly become enemies in one man's mind and suddenly lost their lives for it. None of this makes any of that all right. None of this will make a difference to any of those people now.
But that was yesterday. What about tomorrow?
What if we paid attention to the desperation of another human before he felt the need to pull out a gun. Would that make a difference?
Yesterday in my adopted home, this lush and vibrant city that I love, six people were shot and killed. It started yesterday morning when a man walked into a cafe where he was a regular and started shooting people. Then he continued downtown where he shot and killed a woman and stole her car. Police caught up with him across town and then he knelt down and shot himself. It took all day, while the rest of us went about our business, checking occasionally for updates and wondering what all this was about.
This has already started the political shouting match about gun control. I don't want to enter that fray. I have my own opinions about it, but they don't matter that much. I don't want to talk about guns. I want to talk about the finger that pulled the trigger. The mind that told that finger that was its only choice.
The shooter was known to be unstable and very depressed. His own brother said "We should have seen this coming." The other patrons at the cafe where he was a regular feared of him and for him. He was, by all accounts, an unhappy man. Ostracized and out of sorts. He felt on the fringe of things and the killings were of his perceived enemies. I do not blame the victims. I do not blame the people close to him. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions. He took his unhappiness, his mental illness, his feeling of otherness and made a series of very bad choices. He could have done otherwise. I will judge and say he should have done otherwise. There are plenty of profoundly depressed people who do not choose to kill others. No, I do not blame the victims.
What I do is wonder. I wonder if he could have been helped. I wonder if any of the people who knew him had tried, to no avail. I don't know. I wonder that we live in a society that drives some people so far out of it that they are driven out of their minds. I wonder if it's not the other way around. Perhaps they are already out of their minds and do the driving out themselves? I wonder if this is a trend that will continue.
It is no secret our country is collectively unhappy. Our economy is floundering. There are deepening divides along economic, ideological, racial, sexual, spiritual and just about every other kind of lines. We are a people afraid and nervous. We feel like we have been cheated out of something and that someone must be to blame. Some blame the rich, some the poor, some the military, some the corporations. We are tripping through these divided lines, weary from navigating what might or might not offend. It all becomes so much noise in the background and we are left with a collective migraine. A low, constant buzzing, inescapable pain and over-sensitivity. We want it to stop and nothing seems to help. Someone must be responsible. Someone must be to blame. Are we blaming ourselves? Should we?
 |
| Photo courtesy of Morgue File |
Human suffering is ugly. Sometimes it smells bad. Sometimes it's frightening. Sometimes it sits next to us in human form in a cafe and we move away, uncomfortable and unable to enjoy our lattes. We bottle our own suffering up and hide it away or we splash it about, obnoxious and off-putting while well-meaning people nod and smile, pat-pat, there-there, and go on about their business. We are so caught up in our rapids of busy-ness that to slow down and listen is to risk being swept away, drowning. So we holler a brief hello from our life boats and continue on. I am a socialist. I am a grass roots socialist. I believe that by helping the lowest rungs of our society - children, the homeless, the mentally ill, the elderly - we elevate the whole society. I know not everyone feels this way. I know what it is to be focused elsewhere, to be frightened, to be exhausted, to be discouraged. I know how it feels to get out of the life boat and wade upstream to reach out a hand and have it slapped away or have it accepted only to be left standing soaking wet while someone makes off with my raft without so much as a "how do you do." I don't know how it feels to go out for a cup of coffee and get shot. I don't know how it feels to want to rob another person of life.
When things like this happen, the instinct is to hide. To lock the doors and keep our loved ones close. To shut out the rest of the world and its ugliness and suffering. But sometimes I wonder how that is any different from what we do on any other day. I am a realist, too. I know there will always be people who become unhinged, make unconscionable choices, hurt and destroy. But I wonder. I wonder if we need more locks, more controls, more fear. Or if, perhaps, we would have fewer feel the need to vent and rage if we threw our doors open and listened. If we watched and we helped and we got involved. If we realized that regardless of the packaging, we are all just humans who suffer basically the same emotions, share basically the same needs, the same fears, the same desires. Would it hurt your feelings if someone crossed the street to avoid you? Would it wound you just a little bit if someone wrinkled their nose and walked away when you tried to strike up a conversation? What if you asked for help and people just flowed past, consciously avoiding eye contact? What if you were sick and your society determined that you did not deserve to be well?
None of this excuses the actions a desperate, sick man decided to take yesterday. None of this will bring back the lives of the people who were just out for a cup of coffee, getting into their cars, driving down the street. These innocent people who had unwittingly become enemies in one man's mind and suddenly lost their lives for it. None of this makes any of that all right. None of this will make a difference to any of those people now.
But that was yesterday. What about tomorrow?
What if we paid attention to the desperation of another human before he felt the need to pull out a gun. Would that make a difference?
