I’m a good man.
I try to be the best that I can be in all situations. I also seek to be as authentic as possible in all situations.
So when I smile at the news of someone getting shot, it confuses me.
I’m really struggling with this.
How does a nice guy who wants to spread love and kindness everywhere rejoice at the death of a human?
Am I not as great as I think I am?
Is bowing my head and saying “thoughts and prayers” being honest?
It’s like that moral dilemma: if you could save 5 people by throwing 1 person in front of the train, would you do it?
Math says yes. Logic says yes.
But the public answer, the answer we want people to believe we have in our hearts, is no, is all human life is valuable, maybe even I’d just jump in front of the train myself.
In high school, a bunch of popular kids got drunk and ran their car off the road. They all died, and the next day at school it was completely silent, like a vigil.
I remember the girlfriends of the kids who died went around shushing people who tried to have a conversation. They’d yell at people who laughed. Or even smiled. About anything.
I remember one kid, from my art class — not at all popular — saying that he fucking hated those kids and that they were not nice to him ever, so why should he care that they died. And he kept talking.
That really hit me.
I remember thinking, I didn’t know them either, and from the little I knew – bravado, pranks, chest puffery — I didn’t really like them.
I hadn’t wished them dead, but I also didn’t mourn their death. And I can’t blame that kid for being happy about not getting bullied anymore.
Murder is the opposite of Love.
I don’t like the idea of a bullet in the neck, of terrified college kids scrambling to save their lives, of a wife and kids without a father. And I also don’t like the idea of people being bullied or worse, wished into nonexistence, a different kind of death — death while being alive.
I can give space for sadness, but I must honor my own complicated feelings too.
All human lives have value. Mourning is a sacred process. We’re not all connected in the same way.
I can be full of love, anger, and sadness at the same time.
And I would save those people on the train tracks.