I'm having one of those times when reading the news and the internet buzz is bringing me down. Way down. Sometimes I begin to think I'd rather not belong to the human race. Or more realistically, I'd like to go some place and hide from it all. But then none of that is truly realistic.
I'm a rather susceptible person. I easily engage in stories, movies, plays. When the real world closes in on me, my emotions feel like a poison spreading through every nerve. It doesn't take much when the things I'm reading about or watching have actually happened. I am astounded at the capacity of humans for so much base cruelty and violence. I'm equally disturbed by the retributive attitude that often waves through a society after some violent act. It's a vicious cycle.
I'm not one to judge anyone. I'm just one. That's it. But I can't help feeling that any gleefully hateful attitude is wrong, whether it feels justified or not. Do I think that perpetrators of violent acts should be forgiven easily or simply loved and everything will be better? Of course not. But when a nation in grief stands up and cheers because the perpetrator has been killed, I'm sickened. I think the whole of it is sad. The beginning, the hate and killing, and the end.
On top of all that, there is talk of how we engage in fervor about an event, when our patriotism or our awareness hones in on the event and then it wanes easily. People cast judgement on those that 'move on' too quickly. Frankly, we have to move on at some point. Does it mean we forget? No. Does it mean we don't care? No. But if we live wallowing in the aftermath of terrorism, terrorism wins. What is a proper amount of time before we go back to life? That's a question only each individual can answer because grief and shock affect each person differently.
Instead of celebrating the death of someone, or judging people for moving forward, or judging people for not moving forward, or whatever other negative, judgemental action we could take, I wish we could try to understand. That's all. Try to understand why someone would or could do something so awful. Try to understand why we react in our different ways. Try to understand where to go from here and how to hold on to our beliefs, our freedoms and our sense of community without shutting out any sector of that community.
The 24 hour news coverage, the network's attempts at deep philosophical analysis, the easily flying accusations, the fear of a segment of our society, all these things feel like an anvil pushing me deeper into muddy ground that I cannot escape. I'm sick of politics, I'm sick of hate. I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling that my roots are poison because I come from a nation that many other nations hate. I'm tired of feeling that I have to stand on the right or the left and that if I do, I'm required to hate anyone standing on the opposite side as me. I'm tired of being hated for standing anywhere.
It doesn't matter who I voted for or who you voted for. It doesn't matter in the end because I'm still just like you no matter what I believe. I'm a person, I need to work, support my family, raise my children, live in a neighborhood, go to school, buy groceries, eat, sleep, defecate, wake up, wear clothes, make love to my lover, meet up with my family, uphold a support system for my friends and family knowing that they do the same for me, rake the leaves from my yard, sweep the dust from my floor. It comes down to that really. The dust on my floor has no idea whether I'm liberal or conservative or somewhere in between, it sits there all the same until I clean it up.
