On a (Rare) Serious Note...

What follows is something I wrote quickly last week after all the many and varied shootings took place.  I originally wasn't planning to share it with anyone, thinking of it as just another rough, emotional reaction coughed up in the heat of the moment.  But looking back at it, there are a couple ideas buried in here that I think are actually important for me to think about, talk about, and hopefully be held accountable to.  So I decided to go ahead and share it after all.  It's a bit rough, so please try to consider in the spirit in which it is intended.

I don't usually like to share serious feelings on the internet.  Hell, I don't usually like to share serious feelings at all.  I'm more the sort to process my feelings by masking them with humor.  One of the reasons I'm drawn to comedy in the first place is because of its power to make difficult subjects and emotions easier to engage. On a typical day, I'm an incredibly depressed, angry, self-hating, and lonely individual.  But I'd never dare say that to anyone unless I could reassure them that I was at least partly joking.  For me, like a lot of people, humor is often a defense mechanism.  It can both dull any unpleasantness that I am forced to feel, and protect me from appearing weak in the eyes of others.  Or at least from thinking that that's how I appear in the eyes of others when I let them see glimpses of the real darkness within.

But today, I wanted to take a few minutes to share a few serious (if meandering) thoughts, as so many of us feel increasingly compelled to do lately.  Because like anyone, I carry around my own personal breed of sadness as I wander through my daily life.  And like anybody, that sadness becomes so much deeper when it is exposed to the terrible things that happen to other people.  It's a sadness that comes both from realizing how more sadness there is in the world, and how petty your own appears when compared to the truly horrific things that are happening to others.  Innocent people are killed.  Guilty people are killed when maybe they could have been spared.  Police are demonized for the actions of their worst members, then murdered senselessly and indiscriminately in retribution.  Masses of people die for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone's anger overwhelms them.  It all comes together to look like the fabric of society is tearing apart while we stand back helplessly and watch it happen.  Sadness and helplessness are never a great combination, but they become so much harder to bear when they seem so constant, so inevitable.

We've reached the point where mass shootings and racially motivated killings have become so commonplace that we almost seem to accept them as another fact of daily living.  I know I for one am guilty of that.  When I was in high school and I first heard about Columbine, my first reaction was shock.  Complete and total shock.  I couldn't believe that something like this had happened, because I'd never heard of it happening before.  But these days, that shock is gone, replaced by a dull sense of disappointment.  For example, when I heard about the shooting in Orlando, my initial reaction wasn't, "how could this happen?"  Rather, my first thought could be better summarized as, "wow, that seems like a bigger number than usual."  A more significant emotional reaction would set in later when I'd read more news reports, and the gravity of the situation had time to sink in.  But it wasn't my knee-jerk reaction anymore.

It wasn't my first reaction because it's become so expected that this is just what happens in our country, and that it will happen again.  It's become expected that we'll have mass shootings.  It's become expected that black people will be shot by the police under questionable circumstances.  It's become expected that Democrats will propose gun control legislation they know to be futile, and that Republicans will prove them right by squashing them while clinging to the second ammendment like a security blanket.  It's become expected that my friends will take to Facebook in extended monologues about their personal yet ultimately interchangeable opinions, and that that #blacklivesmatter will start trending again.  It's even become expected that there will be a backlash against those who ask for change, whether it's from closeted racists or law abiding gun enthusiasts.  Of course there are responsible gun owners out there.  And of course all lives matter.  But that isn't the point.  The point is that sadly, people don't need to be reminded that some lives matter anywhere near as frequently as others.

But worst of all, it's become expected that this cyclical pattern will repeat again and again and again.  I know that the tragedies will continue to happen.  I know that my friends will speak out against them, and I know exactly what they'll say.  But I know that nothing will change, and that it'll all happen again in a few days, or if we're lucky, a few weeks.  And that makes me even sadder.  The helplessness gives way to hopelessness when I realize that we've said it all before, and we'll say it again because we're just reciting lines from an endless script that we've been given and accepted as our new routine.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who thinks that you shouldn't bother posting about your feelings on a tragedy, whether it's personal or public, because talk on Facebook is pointless.  On the contrary, I think there's a lot of good that can come from sharing your thoughts on serious subjects.  It can feel like a tremendous release to take something that is eating you up inside and put it out into the world, and there's an equally great amount of healing that can come from seeing that other people saying all the same things that are floating around in your own head.  Whatever dark thoughts you may have in the face of tragedy, whether it's sadness or anger or guilt, or even a longing for self-destruction when the public grief makes your own personal load feel like too much to bear,  it can be deeply comforting to know that you're not the only one experiencing those thoughts and feelings.

So I think that kind of ritual release is important in healing ourselves as individuals, and in bringing us together as a group with a common goal.  But I do get worried when the only thing that we appear to do with our emotions is releasing them.  We share our thoughts with a circle of people who we know will agree with us, we vent our frustrations on the days that we are forced to confront them.  But then we take a deep breath and get back to our lives as usual.  We all talk about change, ask for it, even demand it.  But most of us, myself included, don't seem to do anything more.  We talk about what needs to be done, but then leave the responsibility for doing it up to someone else, some nameless, faceless entity who will hear our cries of rage and heed them.  Over and over, it's as though we say to ourselves, "well, I've said my piece, and it seems as though we're all in agreement here, so this should pretty much sort itself out, right?"  But of course, it doesn't.  Our words (probably including mine here) amount to little more than a momentary personal catharsis that allows us to move on with our day, relieved of our personal burden and assuaged of any guilt.

Ever since the presidential primaries began heating up last year, there's been a lot of talk about how Facebook functions as a sort of echo chamber for our political beliefs.  Liberals only see liberal news, conservatives only see conservative news, and we don't really encounter much that might exist outside of our own pre-determined opinions, or challenge us to think differently.  You can argue about whether that's our own fault or the fault of a mysterious algorithm that guides our feeds, but whatever the cause, it's certainly a perceivable phenomenon.  Say what you might about Donald Trump (and lord knows we do), but he has plenty of supporters.  Millions of people have already voted for him, and yet I have never once seen an article, video, or opinion pop up in my news feed that suggests he might even vaguely be liked or competent.  I know there are people who believe that, but I never see them, because they don't exist within my own carefully curated echo chamber.

And my concern is that when talking about these kinds of national tragedies, all we really want is for the same echo chamber to validate our emotions as well.  We don't want the responsibility of working towards change.  We just want to exorcise our feelings and have them repeated back to us by a chorus of friends who will bounce them on down the line until they fade away into the cavern of unchallenged, empty sentiment.

And again, saying how you feel about something is not pointless.  Speech is important.  Sharing is important.  Building a sense of communal agreement is important.  But it's also important to remember that talk doesn't take the place of action.  However well intentioned, talking about change isn't the same thing as enacting change.

Which raises the question, how does change happen?  People are naturally resistant to it, as we see over and over again, not just on these issues, but in general.  Even changing people's minds seems near impossible when the much discussed Backfire Effect all but ensures that people will not listen to reason.   So when it comes to large, systemic issues like gun violence, it's hard enough to get people to agree on what should change, much less making that change happen.  So in the face of a nearly impossible, Sisyphean task, how do we make imagined change become a reality?And the answer is...I don't know.  Sorry to say it, but after all this ranting, I don't know how to change minds or policies or the world at large.  Really, I'm no better than any other guilty white guy throwing around my feelings as a vague prescription for what someone else should be doing.

But I have been thinking a lot about one part of the equation that seems very important.  In talking about the fight for marriage equality, Dan Savage once said that gay people should remember to thank their straight allies who took up the fight, used their votes, and generally supported a cause that didn't directly effect them because they knew it was right.  In his view, gay people should be thanking straight people because numerically, the fight could not have been won without them.  Or, to put that idea into a broader context, we should be thanking the people who fought for something, despite the fact that they had the privilege of not needing to.

That's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days: privilege.  And it's often thrown around in conjunction with the word "white."  Which is fair, because so many people, people like me, middle-class white people, have so many privileges in this culture that we take for granted, that we'll deny we have if anyone points them out, defending ourselves by pointing to our own, relatively petty struggles.  And among those privileges is one that extends beyond the simple color lines: the privilege of viewing someone else's suffering from the outside.  It's the privilege of having to live with the news, but not the consequences.  The kind of privilege where the only real consequence that you encounter in the face of tragedy is a feeling that can be summarized and expunged by typing up a Tweet on your lunch break.  White people may be the main benefactors of this privilege, but it's not only the privilege of being white.  It's the privilege of anyone who has the luxury to to stand back and watch things unfold from a safe distance as they happen happen to someone else, of being able to turn off the news and know that it doesn't yet effect you.

Maybe I don't know what the change needs to be.  Maybe I'm too much of a follower to lead the charge on social progress.  But I do know that change won't come until people like me, people like most of my friends and family, people who have that privilege to stand back, feel their feelings, comment, lecture, and ultimately go back to their complacent, unaffected lives are willing to risk losing those privileges.  Change can't happen until I, and everyone like me, is willing to admit that a large part of the problem is that we all routinely exercise our privilege to do nothing.  Change won't come until people like me, people who don't need to fight or struggle, are willing to stand up and make ourselves vulnerable, make ourselves uncomfortable.  It won't come until we are willing to stand next to the people who have had their lives shattered and say, "I don't want this privilege unless they can have it, too."

I don't know about you, but I am tired of being part of the problem.  I'm tired of wishing for change, and being disappointed when someone else fails to make it happen.  I want to be part of the solution.  I want to work, and heal, and risk the privileges that I've become accustomed to so that I can share them with everyone else who deserves the same.

Healing doesn't come with time or distance alone.  Days or months or years can pass, they'll never be enough to simply forget a tragedy.  You don't heal by venting about a momentary sadness and leaving it in the past.  You heal by accepting that this thing is apart of you now, and looking to the future with hope.So what can we do to make that future better together?

-TC