On Having Sympathy For The Devil. (Religious Content.)
Like most everyone these days, I've been following the story of the Virginia Tech shooting. It's all over but the axe-grinding now as the talking heads subdivide a tragedy into opportunities to advance their own agendas: more gun control, less gun control, stricter campus security, etc.
For my part, I've been quite disturbed at the depersonalization of Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter. He is as isolated and lost in death as he was in life. Do not mistake me. I am not condoning what Cho did; no sane person could. But the attempts by some to paint him as an unfeeling monster, something inhuman, does a disservice not only to him, but to us all. These days, it seems, it's easier to spout a few words of dime-store psychobabble and issue a postmortem diagnosis culled from the pages of Cosmo than to face reality: this was a human being like you and me. It's easier to wring our hands and push Cho Seung-Hui as far as possible from us with words like "loner" and "loser" and "stalker" than to face the facts: he was alive, he was a young man with feelings and fears and needs whom America, and, by extension, all of us, failed spectacularly and with tragic results.
I can't know what went on in Cho's mind; no one can now, not even his own family. But I do know what it is like to feel isolated, completely alone and alien from everyone around me. My childhood, like the childhoods of many even in this land of plenty, was a crucible of poverty and pain, abuse and rage, littered with dead dreams for which my parents never stopped grieving. Cut off from others my age, repeatedly told that I shouldn't want friends, that no one could be trusted, that others were always out to hurt me, I grew up feeling that life was a vast party from which I was forever exiled, face pressed up against the window glass looking in.
As an adolescent, I sometimes entertained rage fantasies, some of them quite violent, about getting back at the affluent youngsters who tormented me daily--memories I feel ashamed of now that I am older and can better understand that their lives weren't perfect either, that they, too, were only playing the roles set out for them by society. Therefore, I am keenly aware that, at that precarious time when life can seem cheap and unreal, when hormones conspire to make one feel at turns immortal and despondent, the permanent solutions of suicide and homicide can seem like just the thing to solve the temporary problems of bullying and isolation. How many kids out there feel the same thing every day?
Luckily, I didn't have the easy access to weapons that all the school shooters did; blessedly, I found people, other outcasts my age and a few teachers whose memories are precious to me, who showed me the attention and empathy I craved, who helped me see that my life was worth something. Cho Seung-Hui, it appears, was not so lucky. His cries for help went unheard. Was anyone really listening?
Look around you. As Jews, we are told that we must remember always to extend a helping hand to the isolated, the stranger, the lost: for we too were strangers in the land of Egypt. Not a bad rule of thumb, no matter what your spiritual beliefs might be. Cho Seung-Hui was an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land, doubly separated from the kids he went to school with, kids who saw an easy target in his foreignness, in his shyness and his soft voice.
Look around you. How many dozens, how many hundreds, of the people that you pass on your way are sick, sad and suffering? How many of them would benefit from a smile or a kind word? To be sure, neither of those would be enough alone to help someone suffering from a severe mental illness like the one Cho may have had, but I can say from experience that when you are at your lowest, simply to know that someone sees you and cares whether you live or die can make all the difference in the world.
Look around you. See the children who never smile, who walk with eyes downcast as I once did. Hear the silent signal they send out, as I once did, with every step: Hear me. See me. Help me. Dear God, doesn't anyone hear me? We are all responsible for these children; if we saw, and knew, and did nothing to help, must we not bear some of the blame when they go wrong? If it were not for the caring of a very few individuals, some of whom probably don't even know what they meant to me, my story might have ended long before its time. When I heard what Cho Seung-Hui said in his recorded statements, I shuddered. It was something I could have written myself, many years ago. The only difference between us may be that someone cared enough to help me, and so I am alive today and talking to you, while he is dead by his own hand.
This country devours its young; they are cut down in the streets of our cities, in the halls of our schools, and, if they are lucky enough to survive both of those, they could live to be cut down in the streets of foreign cities for reasons they may never understand. That is a recipe for disaster. If societies are to be evaluated according to how they treat their weak, their elderly, those most needing help, how does our society measure up?
We remember the victims, we try to comfort their families, we participate in showy displays of institutionalized mourning. But that is not enough, for among us now is the next school shooter, and the next, and the next. Which of us will be brave and loving and human enough to take the first step to save his life, and with it the lives of his intended victims? For it is written that he who saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world.
Cho Seung-Hui was the first victim, and the last; he was dead long before he first pulled any trigger. Which of us could have helped him? We're all in this together, and nobody gets out alive; the very least we can do is to try to help and love each other through this sad, fucked-up, amazingly beautiful world.
For my part, I've been quite disturbed at the depersonalization of Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter. He is as isolated and lost in death as he was in life. Do not mistake me. I am not condoning what Cho did; no sane person could. But the attempts by some to paint him as an unfeeling monster, something inhuman, does a disservice not only to him, but to us all. These days, it seems, it's easier to spout a few words of dime-store psychobabble and issue a postmortem diagnosis culled from the pages of Cosmo than to face reality: this was a human being like you and me. It's easier to wring our hands and push Cho Seung-Hui as far as possible from us with words like "loner" and "loser" and "stalker" than to face the facts: he was alive, he was a young man with feelings and fears and needs whom America, and, by extension, all of us, failed spectacularly and with tragic results.
I can't know what went on in Cho's mind; no one can now, not even his own family. But I do know what it is like to feel isolated, completely alone and alien from everyone around me. My childhood, like the childhoods of many even in this land of plenty, was a crucible of poverty and pain, abuse and rage, littered with dead dreams for which my parents never stopped grieving. Cut off from others my age, repeatedly told that I shouldn't want friends, that no one could be trusted, that others were always out to hurt me, I grew up feeling that life was a vast party from which I was forever exiled, face pressed up against the window glass looking in.
As an adolescent, I sometimes entertained rage fantasies, some of them quite violent, about getting back at the affluent youngsters who tormented me daily--memories I feel ashamed of now that I am older and can better understand that their lives weren't perfect either, that they, too, were only playing the roles set out for them by society. Therefore, I am keenly aware that, at that precarious time when life can seem cheap and unreal, when hormones conspire to make one feel at turns immortal and despondent, the permanent solutions of suicide and homicide can seem like just the thing to solve the temporary problems of bullying and isolation. How many kids out there feel the same thing every day?
Luckily, I didn't have the easy access to weapons that all the school shooters did; blessedly, I found people, other outcasts my age and a few teachers whose memories are precious to me, who showed me the attention and empathy I craved, who helped me see that my life was worth something. Cho Seung-Hui, it appears, was not so lucky. His cries for help went unheard. Was anyone really listening?
Look around you. As Jews, we are told that we must remember always to extend a helping hand to the isolated, the stranger, the lost: for we too were strangers in the land of Egypt. Not a bad rule of thumb, no matter what your spiritual beliefs might be. Cho Seung-Hui was an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land, doubly separated from the kids he went to school with, kids who saw an easy target in his foreignness, in his shyness and his soft voice.
Look around you. How many dozens, how many hundreds, of the people that you pass on your way are sick, sad and suffering? How many of them would benefit from a smile or a kind word? To be sure, neither of those would be enough alone to help someone suffering from a severe mental illness like the one Cho may have had, but I can say from experience that when you are at your lowest, simply to know that someone sees you and cares whether you live or die can make all the difference in the world.
Look around you. See the children who never smile, who walk with eyes downcast as I once did. Hear the silent signal they send out, as I once did, with every step: Hear me. See me. Help me. Dear God, doesn't anyone hear me? We are all responsible for these children; if we saw, and knew, and did nothing to help, must we not bear some of the blame when they go wrong? If it were not for the caring of a very few individuals, some of whom probably don't even know what they meant to me, my story might have ended long before its time. When I heard what Cho Seung-Hui said in his recorded statements, I shuddered. It was something I could have written myself, many years ago. The only difference between us may be that someone cared enough to help me, and so I am alive today and talking to you, while he is dead by his own hand.
This country devours its young; they are cut down in the streets of our cities, in the halls of our schools, and, if they are lucky enough to survive both of those, they could live to be cut down in the streets of foreign cities for reasons they may never understand. That is a recipe for disaster. If societies are to be evaluated according to how they treat their weak, their elderly, those most needing help, how does our society measure up?
We remember the victims, we try to comfort their families, we participate in showy displays of institutionalized mourning. But that is not enough, for among us now is the next school shooter, and the next, and the next. Which of us will be brave and loving and human enough to take the first step to save his life, and with it the lives of his intended victims? For it is written that he who saves one life, it is as if he saved an entire world.
Cho Seung-Hui was the first victim, and the last; he was dead long before he first pulled any trigger. Which of us could have helped him? We're all in this together, and nobody gets out alive; the very least we can do is to try to help and love each other through this sad, fucked-up, amazingly beautiful world.