{Disclaimer: This is a miserable post. Please read with care, or just don’t read it.}
This a really long blog post for someone claiming not to know what to say. It’s just that when I can’t nail down a thought, it helps me to write it out.
It started yesterday, when I opened my recent blog post to respond to comments, and for the first time noticed the prominent headline in the photo of the newspaper I had posted: “1 killed, 22 hit by gunfire.” When I wrote that blog post, I was so focused on the sweet headline right next to it, and the colourful photo of myself and my beloved, that I had barely noticed and didn’t react to the more shocking headline. I felt immediately ashamed, and contemplated for a while adding an edit to my silly, happy blog post to acknowledge the dreadful headline that I had posted at the top.
How had I not even noticed that headline? Not even noticed.
The past week at our house we have been receiving random deliveries of actual paper newspapers tossed into our driveway like the 1980s. It’s curious and sort of fun. So far we have been gifted with two Wall Street Journals and the latest one was a USA Today. In the USA Today there was an article about current VA Secretary Dennis McDonough that I wanted to read, so I sat down with my coffee an hour ago and opened it up. Right there on the front page, in a different article, was my concern in print: “Continued gun violence has now become part of the American psyche.”
Yes, that had to have informed my complacency with the headline from the day before. It must be that gun violence in a crowd is so commonplace that I don’t even react appropriately anymore, even when I want to react appropriately.
Below the American psyche comment is a question: “What will it take to make us care?” That’s not the right question is it? Don’t we care?
It seems like we care a lot. Our kids get together and tell their school trauma stories now. Most of them were never even exposed to an actual shooter, but still have multiple stories of lockdowns because a credible threat was detected. Millions of American school children have hunkered down in closets and under desks in locked school rooms, wondering if they were living their last moments of life, texting their parents at work, hugging their friends. It doesn’t matter that it turns out to be a false alarm in most cases. Too, too, too often it’s for real, and on the news, and so every drill and every just-in-case lockdown scares the bejeebers out of kids and their families.
“Remember that music festival in Vegas when there was a shooter, some years back?” Pedro asked me, just yesterday. I told him that’s one I will never ever forget, because a year later, my own Kellen and a bunch of friends drove down to attend another music festival in Las Vegas. I asked them, “For real? You are ready to go?” They said they had carefully considered the mass shooting event, and discussed their scatter and evacuation plans, and a meeting point, should there be trouble. Kellen was newly off to college, newly had a driver’s license, and was preparing to drive a Prius full of kids 15 hours to a three-day music festival in a big city. But the thing that stressed me out the most was thinking about some nutjob with a gun. I know I care.
Is the argument that we don’t care enough? Have we not lost enough lives? Is the national narrative misleading (i.e. gun control is a slippery slope to taking everyone’s gun rights away completely)? Is our country’s leadership too impotent to make a difference anymore? Are the politicians all puppets to the gun lobby? Have we done the right research, or enough research? Are there still really people who think it doesn’t apply to them?
Take all the people personally impacted at a shooter incident, plus all of the people who have had to shelter in place due to the threat of shooting violence. How many is that? So many. It’s got to include nearly every single child in America, for starters. And, since the Columbine shooting was in 1999, we’ve had 25 years of increasing incidents of mass shooting violence. This means we have parents of kids subjected to gun violence who were also kids subjected to gun violence decades ago. So who is still out there who thinks it’s someone else’s problem?
I feel lost, and helpless. I have no answers, just pain and grief and now some dismay at knowing that even I have become numbed to the stories of death all around me.
“Today’s events should move us, shame us, shock us into acting,” said President Biden in a White House press statement. “What are we waiting for? What else do we need to see? How many more families need to be torn apart?”
I’ve got nothing. I don’t know what to say to this.
I hate that I’ve done this to you, to me. I put this sadness out there and now I need a path back out. I’ve had a brilliant couple of days. My relationship for some reason has been in a twitterpation phase in the past few weeks. I completed some stressful tasks for groups who depend on me. I have been more organized. I finished calculating my taxes (So complicated this year, with the move, combined resources, consulting work – I had to fill out 9 separate IRS forms.) The weather thawed out and I’ve done some great work outside in the yard. It all makes me feel so good. I even had happy dreams for two nights in a row. Nighttime is the time of fretting for me, and it bleeds into my dreams. My best dreams are merely the not stressful ones. But night before last I dreamed about friggin KITTENS, you guys.
So where is my path out of dismay and gun violence and back to that happy place? I guess it’s perspective. The United States is not currently at our most violent stage. That was apparently in 1974. Humankind has great capacity for awfulness and also for brilliance, and we certainly always shift back and forth through phases. We will, collectively, agree eventually that life will be better without the threat of shooter violence at any gathering, and we will make the necessary changes.
In the meantime another perspective change I can make is to narrow my focus. Caring deeply about national injustice is too much for me to hold. It feels like I’m contributing to the national complacency, but I’m not quitting or giving up. I’m standing ready. I am not the one who is going to lead the charge but I am a person who shows up to support the charge. In the meantime, instead of looking at my whole big beautiful country that I love and ache for, I will look at my Monday holiday (happy President’s Day to those of you who get the day off today), at the springtime birds arriving in my yard, at my text messages filled with friends and plans and funny pictures of my brother’s cat. I’ll focus on today’s happy challenge: the chickens are so excited for longer days and warmer weather that they are laying more eggs and Pedro and I have to find recipes that use a lot of eggs.
Hopefully there is an army of us who care, standing ready to cast the votes, hold up the signs, attend the marches and protests, open our hearts and ears and listen to our neighbors, so that when the time comes for us to turn our world around, we can play our part.
Conscious Engagement 
If it’s any comfort, it is human nature. We can’t be frantically disturbed all the time. I didn’t notice the other headline either, just looked at the one you were spotlighting. It’s unsettling though, and a reminder to persist.
Thank you, Nancy. We can’t be frantically disturbed all the time. It’s not productive, to be honest. I want to consistently remember to be disturbed sometimes though. And that did happen. Thank you for the validation and the perspective. ❤
Beautiful. I agree with everything you say. But I could never express my views as well as you. I believe we share a lot
David, your support is always important to me. Wado ❤
I would never picture you as an uncaring person in any sense of the word, Crystal. I know you too well. It was a simple mistake. Your comments on gun violence here are right on, however. I don’t think it it is an issue of non-caring. The vast majority of Americans are prepared to ban assault weapons and believe we have to keep our children safe. What’s lacking is courage and moral character of so many of our leaders.
I have been wondering about that part, Curt. What is the actual message of someone who asks, “Why don’t we care enough?” Because we do, but apparently not enough to elect the people who would make a difference. But also, I have a growing understanding of foreign manipulation in our widespread misunderstandings about what is true and how many people support a position. Outside actors are delighting in their ability to cause chaos between us. Match that to our ineffectual leaders who often seem only interested in fame and power even if it means engaging in shameful behavior and harming the country in order to get it. It’s a wicked recipe. But I still believe the pendulum will eventually swing a different way.
The world of modern media has been transformative, Crystal, no doubt about it. Part of it is how it can be manipulated and part of it is how it allows for and encourages tribalism. Rational thought gets lost in the process. Certainly players from outside manipulate it, but there are plenty of people in our country who think that bending truth and outright lying are perfectly okay.
I have no words just hugs 🤗
Oh gosh, Brian. That’s exactly what I need. Thank you. ❤
🥰
Sad to say I didn’t notice that headline either. I feel for you all
It makes me feel better that I’m not the only one. Thank you for your love, Derrick. ❤
X
First, I did note that article, but please know it didn’t take anything away from the love story alongside it. I’m with you on this. I wrote about it last year, how we are becoming numb to the news. I likened it to going to the refuge and *only* seeing sparrows and robins. Like when a thing becomes too familiar it becomes invisible and we casually dismiss it. We can’t look past the gun crisis and we must not allow ourselves to go numb to the hate and violence. This was good to read and ponder and consider. I’m glad you put it out there. Thank you for giving it your voice*
You just reminded me that this is actually a very helpful defense mechanism in human bodies, to stop seeing what you see all the time, or stop hearing what you hear all the time. In that case, I can rest a little because it’s my body taking care of me, and I appreciate that. As you say, we can’t allow ourselves to go numb enough to stop noticing altogether. Thank you for saying it’s ok to put it out into the world. I am sensitive to contributing to dark energy. But also, I don’t want to participate in the social avoidance of the topic of gun violence.