Horrors

Do you remember the news story about a 2 year-old boy snatched by an alligator in front of his parents at Disney World?  I do.  I still cannot imagine the horror those parents must have felt as they watched their precious son disappear beneath the surface of the pond in the death grip of an alligator.  That kind of real horror grabs me by the guts.  I feel my stomach twist.  I feel a shot of stomach acid.  I feel a shiver in my spine.  I feel a sharp pain in my chest.  I feel heartbreak.  I feel horrible.  I am in horror.  I so wish I could not picture the event, that somehow I could turn off my brain and erase that projection from my mind’s eye.  But I cannot.  It plays and replays.  Horror.  I escape shaken and changed, full of a renewed awareness of the fragility of life and the unfairness of life, and the random ways in which the universe reminds us that strange coincidences happen often to our horror.  And I think of those I love the most, hold most dearly in my heart’s esteem.  I am oh so grateful that my horror is vicarious.

Is there a way to relieve this horror by finding someone to blame?  Can we say the parents should not have been walking by that pond and they somehow got what they deserved?  Can we say that alligators hunt small mammals and the alligator was just doing his thing?  Can we say that life is tough, it is unfair, it is cruel just get over it?  None of those strategies work for me though I hear they work for others.  I am still in the shoes of the parents, watching my two year-old.  No rationalization, no blame of others will ever relieve that pain, that horror.  The pain I share is sympathy and imagined empathy.  I believe it is an essential element of the human condition.  I believe to lack sympathy and empathy is dysfunctional.  Anyone who found the death of that young boy funny, or just, or somehow simply fate lacks those human attributes.  Sympathy and empathy are prerequisites for vicarious horror.  I am horrified by the ability of some to avoid empathy by blaming the victims

And so I find new horrors.  Children taken from their parents, separated, scared, unable to speak the language, crowded together, hungry, no water, no soap, no way to get clean.  And they cry all night.  What a horror.  I imagine the parents, grief stricken and confused, separated from the humans they love the most.  Also crowded, also without food, etc.  What a horror.  How can I be a human and not feel their pain?  I only can if I can find a way to blame them, fear them as they suffer at our hands.  There is no other way.  If I can only think of them as somehow less human than me, then I am OK.  But, I cannot think that way.  I think all human life is precious. 

We did the same thing to the Japanese residents during World War II.  Hitler did the same thing to the Jews and Gypsies in Germany.  Terrorists groups do the same things to people who think differently than they do.  Others are doing the same to Syrian refuges and Nigerian refugees, Afghan refugees, Venezuelan refugees, and on and on.  We did the same thing to Black Americans.  Some have always found a way to justify their disdain for other humans allowing them to be isolated, tortured, deprived of necessities, and even killed.  I can’t do that.  Every suffering human is a 2 year old boy in the grips of an alligator.  I would do all that I could to save him.  Save them.

Yes, I am a bleeding heart.  Yes, it haunts me as I slip into bed at night that others are sleeping in cardboard boxes or in sleeping bags under bridges.  Yes, it haunts me that so many go without food, water, shelter, health care.  I believe as our Declaration of Independence declares, that all men are created equal and have certain rights that are simply an inherent attribute of being human.  Our glorious gift from France standing on Ellis Island simply says, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

We have not always been a nation of acceptance and tolerance and support and opportunity.  But when we drifted from that path we would right ourselves and resume leadership of humanitarian efforts on this planet.  In that we were noble.  We are no longer noble.  In fact, if we point that out we are asked to leave.

Now, we create horrors.