I no longer understand the world — not that I ever did.
As I saw the reports continue to roll out regarding the
school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, I felt sick to my stomach. Those
poor babies, those poor, innocent people who tried in vain to protect them. The
poor family of the perpetrator. It all seems so senseless.
My job didn’t help. You see, it was my job that day to
monitor the story, to publish the updates on The Sentinel’s website as they
became available and to plan the content for the next day’s paper. But all I
wanted to do was run out of the building and drive to my son, pull him out of
daycare and hug him until it hurt.
This isn’t the first tragedy I’ve handled as a journalist. I
was an editor that had to manage a staff of 30 college students on Sept. 11,
2001; I was the front page designer for a major metro daily the day Pope John
Paul II died and when the last shuttle disaster occurred and when Osama bin
Laden was killed. It’s just an expected matter of fact when you commit yourself
to this job: I take the people’s right to know seriously and do my very best to
balance the wants and needs of people to inform them about their world.
But this time was different. This time was the first time I
was a mother. And these were children — 6- and 7-year-old children. Before, I
could sadly shake my head at the tragic events, quietly say prayers for lives
lost or souls hurt. This time I could picture my son at that school. This time
it was personal.
I posted a short sentence about my sadness that day on my
personal Facebook page, because I felt the urge to say something. But as I watched my news feed, another feeling took hold
— a different kind of grief. There were those who immediately called for
banning guns. There were those who called for arming teachers. There were those
who claimed the slaughter of those innocent lives was attributed to a lack of
God in schools. There were those who called for committing all individuals with
mental-health problems to institutions, no matter the severity of their
illness. There were even those who blamed the media for sensationalizing the
story, even though I would argue this event was so unbelievably appalling on
its own.
It’s human nature to try to rationalize — to try to search
for answers and assign blame. If we can point a finger or identify some neatly
packaged solution, it assuages the unnerving sense of uneasiness that we might
just not be able to foresee and prevent these things from happening again.
But life isn’t structured like a Paint by Number kit. There
is no simple formula for eliminating horrific events from the world. These
things will happen as long as humankind walks the Earth.
And someday I will have to explain to my innocent, sweet, little
boy why people hurt each other like this. It scares me, because I desperately
want to shield him from the atrocities of the world. I want him to believe in
goodness, purity, love and kindness. But I know that’s not realistic and that I
must allow him to find his way.
In my job, I see, hear and read about the lowest depths of
human depravity; the random, freak accidents; the life-changing mistakes people
make that affect countless others. I will never feel at ease sending my son to
a mall, to a movie theater and, now, to school.
But I have hope. I can’t explain it, but there is this tiny,
little light that shines within me. I am determined to love my family and
friends as hard as I can in the short time I have with them. I am committed to helping
my son navigate this complicated, often treacherous world with an open heart
and mind.
And I will continue to hope that we can one day move past
the knee-jerk reactions of explaining away these tragedies in order to dismiss
them to get on with our lives. We need to start having open, meaningful
dialogue with one another to solve a pandemic that is gripping our world. We
are so fractured and divided — and so sure that we’re right — that we often
don’t even listen to the other person, regardless of the issue.
No, I will never understand the world. But I have hope. It’s
the one thing that binds us together, across nations and race, economic status
and gender, age and political affiliation. We all hope for better, we all mourn
for the lives lost in these senseless tragedies, we all yearn for answers. We
just have to be honest with where that leads us and be open to learning tough
but hopefully helpful, lasting lessons.
— Sarah Leach is assistant managing editor at The Holland
Sentinel. Contact her at (616) 546-4278 or sarah.leach@hollandsentinel.com.
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