What Are We To Do?
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
We often hear questions in the aftermath as such tragedies as the Virginia Tech shootings. Traumatic events are like that. Our world, once sleepy and encapsulated, is suddenly cracked wide open. The danger that resides in existence has set foot on our perceptual doorstep and broke the door down. We are left asking who, what, when, why, and how, As if answering those questions would really help us.
Perhaps they might, in the sense of putting us back to sleep again.
In order to live in our world we must have assumptions about it. We cannot live as if there is nothing we can count on. The car will start, The office will be open. The bus will stop at the red light. People won't kill me. And so on. And yet, sometimes the car does not start and the bus rolls right into on-coming traffic, and yes, people do kill one another.
So, we ask why.
And in that question our conscience opens to the light of day. How we answer this questions seems to say a lot about us as people. One of the first answers seems to be to marginalize the offender. He's this or that, utterly unlike us. Then we look at the behavior and conclude he must be crazy, also unlike us. Sometimes we even look at the victims and hint that they asked for the nightmare, "look at what she was wearing!" Or , he should have known better than to go into that neighborhood!" In all of this we are essentially saying my life is not like that. I am normal. Nothing like that can happen to me. And thus, we enable ourselves to step out of our homes and into the world once again.
Yet, here we are. Do these answers really address anything?
People hurt others because they themselves are hurting. What are we doing to care for people who hurt? What are we doing to prevent hurt from happening? Loneliness, isolation, alienation, frustration, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, hunger: all of these are a part of our everyday lives. For some of us, they are overwhelming.
It seems to me that until we are able and willing to breakdown the illusion that we are somehow different from those who suffer and set aside our belief that those who suffer must somehow, themselves, find a way out of their nightmare, we will continue to face such awful days as we did recently.
This is our world and we share in it everything that it is. It is time for us to behave that way.
Be well.
"
Good Morning All,
We often hear questions in the aftermath as such tragedies as the Virginia Tech shootings. Traumatic events are like that. Our world, once sleepy and encapsulated, is suddenly cracked wide open. The danger that resides in existence has set foot on our perceptual doorstep and broke the door down. We are left asking who, what, when, why, and how, As if answering those questions would really help us.
Perhaps they might, in the sense of putting us back to sleep again.
In order to live in our world we must have assumptions about it. We cannot live as if there is nothing we can count on. The car will start, The office will be open. The bus will stop at the red light. People won't kill me. And so on. And yet, sometimes the car does not start and the bus rolls right into on-coming traffic, and yes, people do kill one another.
So, we ask why.
And in that question our conscience opens to the light of day. How we answer this questions seems to say a lot about us as people. One of the first answers seems to be to marginalize the offender. He's this or that, utterly unlike us. Then we look at the behavior and conclude he must be crazy, also unlike us. Sometimes we even look at the victims and hint that they asked for the nightmare, "look at what she was wearing!" Or , he should have known better than to go into that neighborhood!" In all of this we are essentially saying my life is not like that. I am normal. Nothing like that can happen to me. And thus, we enable ourselves to step out of our homes and into the world once again.
Yet, here we are. Do these answers really address anything?
People hurt others because they themselves are hurting. What are we doing to care for people who hurt? What are we doing to prevent hurt from happening? Loneliness, isolation, alienation, frustration, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, hunger: all of these are a part of our everyday lives. For some of us, they are overwhelming.
It seems to me that until we are able and willing to breakdown the illusion that we are somehow different from those who suffer and set aside our belief that those who suffer must somehow, themselves, find a way out of their nightmare, we will continue to face such awful days as we did recently.
This is our world and we share in it everything that it is. It is time for us to behave that way.
Be well.
"
