There was a time in my life when I would have reacted to the tragedy at Virginia Tech as many are reacting—with anger. As one student expressed, “I’m beyond upset. I’m enraged.”
It’s easy in hindsight to blame authorities for not locking down the campus. They made a judgment call, and apparently got it wrong: the incident was well beyond a domestic dispute. Telling students to proceed to classes as usual, but cautiously, appears now like a poor decision—yet, it would have seemed like a sane decision had it turned out to be an isolated domestic incident.
A great deal of anger is bound to pour out in the days and weeks ahead. But it will solve nothing. New regulations will be written for how to respond in such situations. More security will be added to campuses perhaps. But the reality is that, no matter what precautions are taken, we live in a world in which we are vulnerable to each other—and if one of us loses it, mayhem can result.
What I feel instead of anger is an incredible sorrow. I didn’t know a single person who was involved. Yet, I knew every one of them. We all did.
We knew the individuals who were killed. We know the wounded. We know their parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. We know them far more deeply than most of us can begin to imagine.
And that is why the only fitting response is to feel the grief that comes with losing people who are, in a very real sense, a part of us.
We think of ourselves as isolated individuals, connected to family and friends in many cases, but really having little or nothing to do with the people who suffered this carnage. Similarly, we think of ourselves as quite separate from the people who die at the hands of suicide bombers in Iraq, Pakistan, Casablanca—the list these days seems almost endless.
We are not separate. Neither are we isolated. We are all part of one life, one universal heartbeat at the center of the cosmos, one love that binds each and every one of us together with ties far closer than kith and kin.
So today, there is only one fitting response: tears, grief, deep sadness.
Tears for the loss of each student or faculty member. Tears for those who have lost them. But also, tears for the administration, who made the best decision they were at that moment capable of, and tears for the police and ambulance workers who had to confront the aftermath. I have been present at a shooting; it is not an image that leaves your mind or heart in a hurry.
Among a group of friends last night, the comment was passed that the executions were probably carried out by a “crazy” man. I’ve seen the same comments in the press. There will always be crazy people, we tell ourselves. It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not one of us—not someone even remotely like us—who could do such a thing, just one isolated “nut.”
But he, too, was one of us. He was as much a part of us as our own heartbeat. Somewhere in the world, it’s likely there are family and friends who are so bewildered by what he did, they don’t even know where to begin with their grief. In their eyes, he was their college student—just as I have a son who is a college student.
I cannot imagine the feelings of the mother of the man who committed these murders, or the father, if they are alive. I cannot begin to fathom how his siblings must feel, if he has siblings. The pain of knowing someone you brought into the world, or grew up with, did such a terrible thing must be excruciating beyond all description.
Tears are the only fitting response. Tears, and compassion. If anger, range, fury are what you are feeling, instead of venting the anger, allow yourself to be “with” it. No denial, no venting—just bringing stillness to it, and allowing it to be.
When we bring stillness to our strong emotions, quieting ourselves instead of becoming vocal, we move from emoting to deep feeling. The two are not the same. When we stop screaming with rage, we find that behind the anger is a well of sadness. Tears begin to flow. Compassion replaces rage.
If an administrative official made a wrong call yesterday, how must he or she feel today? Can we allow ourselves to go there—to feel what such people must be feeling? For to go there, be with them, be alongside them and in our heart hold their hand, is the only fitting response for a species who are all expressions of the single one heart of the universe that is the source of all life, all love, all caring.
On the morning of Nine Eleven, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth, recorded an interview called Even the Sun Will Die. If you have not heard it, you can order it from this website. In this interview, Eckhart calls us to awareness of how craziness is not an isolated state of a minority, but a feature of the human race at its present level of development. In some measure, we are all part of the craziness of our planet. We are all responsible for the tragedy that sweeps the globe day after day.
Anger solves nothing. What is needed is awareness. Tragedies on this scale happen all over the world each day, but we ignore most of them because they don’t seem to touch our lives. Yet, they are happening not to them, but to us.
When we see our oneness—when we feel the oneness in our bones, instead of merely as a concept in our head—we become responsible for each other. We become responsible to love, to care, to share, to include, to reach out.
In a caring world, people don’t grow up isolated in their rage, frozen in their anger, stewing in their resentment. That only happens to people in a world where all of us are somewhat crazy, which is what enables us not to notice, not to care, not to reach out and include.
In a caring world, even when there is brain damage, there is deep love and inclusion. People who are damaged are surrounded by love, protected by compassion, nourished by the goodness of all among whom they live.
Individuals only lose it when they have disconnected at some level. They lose it when they don’t feel part of the fabric of humanity. Our world has many such people today. That’s one of the symptoms of the craziness that haunts us all. Such “crazy” individuals become the identified patient, the scapegoat even, for an insanity in which we all participate—the insanity of being disconnected from the oneness that is our very being.
Oneness is the truth of our being. Connectedness is the essence of our humanity. When these are not experienced, tragedy is the result.
I long for the day when, from the earliest days in school, the bullying, taunting, and isolation that are rife today in our educational system are replaced by deep feelings of inclusion, oneness, connectedness.
I long for each and every child who enters our world to be introduced to the universal Presence that is the core of each of us. I long for a sense of our oneness as expressions of this Presence, and therefore our greatness as individuals and as a species, to become the heart and soul of our school curriculum.
In the meantime, we all have a part in bringing about what Eckhart Tolle calls the New Earth. We help foster awareness of our oneness, and the love that flows from knowing we are one, when we take responsibility for ourselves becoming conscious. To assist this process is the sole reason Namaste Publishing exists.
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