All week I have been turning over in my mind so many why and how questions. Random, incomplete thought without order or
pattern.
Until today when I asked myself why it was so important for
me to find answers for what happened in Orlando? Did my unconscious mistakenly believe that if
I found answers, I could somehow put this horrific slaughter behind me and
return to the predictable patterns of my daily life?
Naming that I might have personal motives for the need to understand
led me in a more coherent direction. Perhaps this search for understanding is a
futile attempt to find some peace with one man’s abhorrent act. Believing that
somehow our knowing will prevent
another similar event.
The media has been filled with speculation. The FBI is
meticulously investigating. Necessary to
do, but probably not preventative. Like any disease, a cure for violence depends
more on the meta-reasons angry individuals take up guns.
Yes, this man was likely conflicted about his sexual
preferences. Yes, he was an increasingly angry man who abused his first wife.
Was he mentally ill? Depends on how mental illness is defined. One can be
utterly sane and still be violent. And mental illness is not predictive of acts
of violence. Was he a truly devout
Muslim? It looks like he was not. Was he really radicalized by ISIS or was it just
a ruse he used to justify to himself the slaughter of so many people?
He was not an immigrant but a US citizen. Barring immigrants
would solve nothing. Nor would preventing people who are Muslim from entering
this country prevent acts of terrorism. In this country, terroristic acts have
been have been committed by people who “belong here” by virtue of their
citizenship.
Yes, there are too many guns in this country – and loose
rules allow their easy purchase. But in
recent terrorist attacks, guns used were legally obtained.
The truth is that we live in a culture of violence. Just
watch commercials advertising TV shows. Listen to the vicious slander of this
presidential campaign. And lest we think this violence is an American problem,
we need only to listen to the news from elsewhere. Today Belgium is on high
alert. And a UK MP died because a man used a gun to shoot her down.
Answers to all these questions would not satisfy our deephunger
to really know what happened in
Orlando and elsewhere.
Precious lives lost, many of them young adults with so much
left to give to the world and their community. Friendships ended in their deaths
and families grieve. Their lives will
never be the same..
However, it is not jst people directly affected by what
happened. No matter what we eventually come to know about why all this
senseless slaughter happened –neither
will our lives be the same
