noiselessly

          I feel like I should be saying something like, "Why does it have to take tragedy to make us treasure what we've got? To make us loose our lips and melt our pride in order to say 'I love you'?"

          But it's an obvious statement.

          I'm truly grateful that my friends at NIU are all right, truly sorry for the families and friends of the students that aren't. I'm sorry, too, for the shooter, and whatever provoked him. I'm sorry that these terrible things happen. It's awful.

          I'm not being fatalistic, or writing off responsibility with the excuse of impotence. But, what can I do about it? This is a serious question. There's a disease in our society (which is another bastard phrase people use to say, "There's nothing we can do"). How do you fix something like this? What can you do to help? To prevent? I'm open to suggestions here.

          I think when things like this happen, we have to take time to express love. We have to take time to understand how fragile life is, how rare and precious humanity is. You have to take a day, a week, a moment for a year, to feel mortality against your skin, a universe of razors, to know that everyone moves like smoke between the blades at every moment, and we present a frail membrane, the skin of a bubble, to the inhospitable world.

          But then you have to continue to live. And you can't live, not really, with death in front of your eyes. I mean, you have to keep death close - that's how you remember to love, how you learn to appreciate, and breathe. But, at the same time ...

          A friend of mine - she's going into social work, and she's one of those rare people whose heart is still soft. She breaks when she thinks of the evils in the world. She wants to fight it all, injustice and hunger and greed and shallow, mean, small minds. But whenever she thinks about it, she dissolves. It breaks her heart, and that's good, because it gives her passion, but it overwhelms her. It's too much, she says, for anyone to fight. With so much selfishness, so much pettiness, so much hate, how can anyone better this world? She tries to believe that people are inherently good, and when the evidence goes another way, she doesn't know what she's fighting for anymore.
          She bruises too easily, still. She's got the passion and the drive, but she feels so deeply. It's rare, people who remember how to feel. The trick is to learn how to fight, to toughen that skin, without forgetting that pain. That heartbreak that drove you.

          And that's the point of hope. It's an open-eyed acknowledgment of how bad things are, how seemingly irreparable. And yet, despite all the evidence, you latch onto those moments when people choose to be good - you foster them. Protect them, fight to allow those moments to grow.

          And we've got a responsibility to live. Not many can do that, really live, while nursing a broken heart. Sometimes you can - it serves to sharpen the colors, adds that poignancy that focuses things so well - but too much only drains the life out of life. We owe it to tragedies to appreciate the instances of good, and to love, whatever that means. You fight the iniquities of existence by loving.


          I know how easily existence is squandered, how noiselessly love is dropped to the ground.
          - Gretel Ehrlich