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| A statement for the age. City Gate, Port-of-Spain. Photo by Jhaye-Q Trinbago |
I UNDERSTAND FEAR. It may not look it to people watching me from outside; but I, also, am afraid often.
So I understand when people react out of fear. Reacting is one thing, though; acting is another.
After the instinctive fight or flight urgings have abated, and we are left time to think and reason, we must come better than jumping on a high horse and trying to ride down the throat of essentially everyone, whether friend, foe or vapid unconcerned.
For the first time since the incident, I looked up -- with trepidation -- "New Zealand massacre." Many things came up. The one I opened had the header: "Defiant vigil starts healing in New Zealand after massacre." Because that's what I want to see.
"Did you look at it?" I was asked right after the terror act was committed and started viraling social media.
"No."
"Are you going to?"
"No."
"Why? Are you afraid to look at it?"
"Yes. Yes, I am afraid."
See, I am afraid to feel more despair as I regard my world than I already do. I am afraid to feel more helpless and useless when I think about how much work, time and resources it will take to truly succor all people in our world.
I am afraid I, too,will get swept up in waves of rage, hate and vengefulness that seeks first and foremost to do unto others as they done unto you.
More than all of that, I am afraid of loving my fellow humankind more than I do, because it's breaking my heart to see them breaking each other when, in truth, it would be so easy not to.
In Candide, Voltaire says that men were not born wolves, but they've surely turned themselves into wolves. I disagree.
Anyone who's read up on lupine society would know these beasts don't kill for sport, don't waste, don't take more than they need. They hunt because it is their nature, to feed themselves and their kin. They love another wold for life. They live by a code that truly seeks the best for the pack. They leave alone that which is not targeted for food or does not feel threatening.
We're human beings and we don't live that way. Well ... too often we don't.
National born killers
I sometimes want to kill. To devour hearts and crush skulls. I was not raised to feel that way. I learned it in my nation and my world.
Always, though, the voice comes up in me, "Who are you to take a life? Are you so good, so special, so rare, of such quality and worth; do you merit the breath in your own lungs so much that you can decide who else does not?"
I'm going to look at this New Zealand act of terror from all kinds of angles; and there will be those who will wholeheartedly wish I'd just dry up and die. But before I look at anything or anyone else I'm looking at myself.
What could I have done to prevent this?
It may seem absurd, egotistical or on some sort of martyr-tip to be asking that, because a man from Australia went to a land equally far removed from where I am to slay dozens of people going about the business of prayer and spirituality.
But I believe in the mathematics of civic responsibility. The more of us who think and then work to be good, do right, not hurt, it adds up and will eventually take over everything. Like an opposite "bad apple." Or a stone-cold butterfly effect.
I have to have faith that I am not just one of a few people on our planet who believe that if we are directly, devotedly better persons in ourselves, then the whole world can be made a better place from it.
Come Good
Next post:- The ties that unwind: TnT reaction to NZ killingsFor more Jhaye-Q speak on all things TnT, hit the link:
Trinbago Shine On
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