It would appear that while I was away, a serious conversation broke out in the decidedly UNSERIOUS thread about my lovely lady lumps. (Don’t get me started on that phrase, and how much I think it equates breasts with the end result of abuse–“take your lumps”/”If you don’t like it, lump it”)
So in an effort to be kind of serious, I’ve been thinking about what dolphin said in response to what John said.
John: This is a terrible tragedy — but I think gimmicky things like this just trivialize the situation. … There’s a time for gestures, a time for symbolism, but I think we get too fascinated by that stuff sometimes.
dolphin: How harsh. It’s not trivial for people to grieve the best way they know how. If my blog was still active I don’t know if I’d participate in the Blog Silence or not, but I would certainly not denigrate others who felt they could help themselves process the tragedy better participating. … [My friend who knows one of the victims] has been doing things… that you would probably find gimmicky and trivial, but if it helps her cope…
There are different levels of grief and different responses to tragedy, in my opinion. The first time I noticed it openly was when Princess Diana died. The news footage for days on end was of candles and teddy bears and flowers and crayoned poems lining the streets of London. It was an overwhelming response to a public tragedy. Diana had at one time been the future Queen, and she was loved by many people in Britain. Then, on 9/11 we saw the same thing. But during 9/11 the “professional grievers” angle began to bug me a little bit. From the footage I’ve seen of New York, Manhattan and the Pentagon, there was much the same group response. It still makes me cry to think of the photos of missing loved ones that were part eulogy and part hope. But then someone in my office building who didn’t know any of the victims or have any direct connection with anything started a 9/11 memorial outside their office. I asked her in the bathroom why she did it, just in case she did have a family member or old classmate in one of the towers.
“I wanted to be able to be part of the mourning process. My husband wouldn’t let me go to New York, so I did this here.”
I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Does grief now need to be public in order to be real? Especially grief for people we never knew? Even more to the question, if we build shrines for those we’ve never met, what response is left when our parents or spouses or children die?
I go back and forth on this. I think it’s a good thing to feel emotion in response to tragedy. All in all I’d much rather see people cry for those they didn’t know than never weep for anything. But I do feel, in my heart of hearts, that if you aren’t touched personally by a tragedy it’s possible to be a bit tasteless when you adopt a ritual response. Is wearing a black armband a way for you to cope or a way for you to get some reflected attention?
“Don’t get me started on that phrase, and how much I think it equates breasts with the end result of abuse–”take your lumps”/”If you don’t like it, lump it”
It’s funny. I see through a cook’s eyes. When I hear that phrase, I think of lumps in batter (especially cornbread, which can have double-D-sized lumps if you don’t stir enough)
***NOTE*** Christian speak ahead.
As for the main theme of this post, I try to follow a rule that is based on the teachings of Jesus. I have to ask myself:
Am I doing this to call attention to myself?
Could this just as easily be done in private?
Or, would it actually be of comfort to the subject of my sympathy for me to show solidarity in some way?
If the answers are no,no,yes, then I feel it’s appropriate.
***END Christian Speak
I think for most, they should do what they feel is decent.
Kat,
All very good points, and I’m in total agreement with you. Grief, especially for people whom we have never met, does not need to public. Sure, there is a time and place for public grief (such as funerals, vigils, etc.). But then for someone to set up a memorial for people they do not know – to me that does border on tasteless. Then again, there are people out there who are so giving, so caring, that they feel it is their duty to memorialize those who have lost their lives.
Every human being that is not numb from the heart up will feel a definite amount of sorrow and pain for those who have lost a loved one, simply because we have all been there. This is what I call sympathetic grief. We all experience it when we go to funerals of a friend or even a total stranger. This is what most of us are feeling right now with the Virginia Tech shootings.
Then we feel the tremendous pain of the loss of a loved one with whom we have a direct tie. I call this empathetic grief. I have nothing against anyone who publicly displays their grief…Just call it human nature, but I feel a little more apprehension toward those who show absolutely no signs of pain at the passing of a loved one (although people grieve in various ways). But I try not to judge anyone who doesn’t publicly show their grief, simply because it’s not the Christian thing to do.
But then, just occasionally, you have the people out there who will make such a public display of grief for even a total stranger, that it is almost borders on mockery. This is what I call pseudogrief. I believe there are those that are so hungry for attention that they will resort to just about any means necessary to make sure people notice their “grieving” process.
But this is not to say that every public display of grief is pseudogrief. There are people out there, especially in cultures other than our own, where public grieving is accepted – even expected. This form of grief tends to break my heart when I see it; I just want to rush over to the people and comfort them as much as I can…I just can’t stand to see someone in that much pain.
I must say, Kat, you have a way of making me think. 🙂 Thanks for that!
I agree with your post in theory, but my question is who gets to decide what grief is acceptable and what isn’t?
What about a VT student who wasn’t in anyway involved in the shooting and didn’t know any of the victims (Tech’s a big school, I’ll guarantee there are alot students who fall into that category)?
What about the mother of the student described above?
What about the mother of a student at a different school (I can image that, depending on the individual, this could easily be traumatic for the parent of any college student, particularly a freshman in their first year away from home)?
I guess I’m just saying that this soon after a tragedy, it’s probably better to not question people’s motives and let people handle it the way they feel is best for them. If that means that some people “grieve” just to draw attention to themselves, then I guess I’m OK with that.
I probably would have been quicker to agree with you fully if this was being posted right after 9/11 (sorry if that sounds terrible). I guess it’s making me look at things a little differently when the headlines about it are listed under “Local News.”
Dolphin,
That’s just it…none of us get to decide what is acceptable and what isn’t. You make some very, very good points. I agree that we shouldn’t question people’s motives, and we should just let people pour their hearts out in grief (or not pour their hearts out, as the case may be) and we do the same.
However, I think the only time I’d really be against someone’s public display of grief is if they are trying to profit from it in some form or fashion. I think that’s when it would cross the line for me.
I guess it’s making me look at things a little differently when the headlines about it are listed under “Local News.”
See, for you it IS personal. For all those people it IS personal. I’d even venture to say that it may be personal for other schools, because the University system has a lot of functions where people “know” each other–professors from one campus befriend those on other campuses because of shared professional interests, etc.
I think everyone knows deep down whether or not they’re grieving out of the emotions of loss and sorrow.
And really, maybe this is as much a personality difference that I share with some folks. Because as much as I’m fairly open on this blog, I don’t “do” emotion in any kind of public way. (this can even go back to the ’emotion in politics’ debate,because I guess they’re the same…)
I am a very emotional person, but I also tend to be very private with my emotions, in the same way that I am a sexual person but guarded about that as well. I don’t relate well to things which seem exhibitionistic to me, but then again I realise that what seems exhibitionistic to ME may be mere “expressiveness” to someone else. We’re all on a continuum, I guess.
I just keep thinking back to various times in my life when I’ve been around others who try to co-opt someone else’s pain as a way to get themselves some attention. I’ve recently had a friend go through a personal tragedy. We were both part of the same group, and there were many people from the larger group who had never spoken to my friend before. But as soon as this friend became part of a tragedy–and therefore the main topic of conversation–several folks from the larger group were falling over themselves to suddenly be nice to this friend and be part of this friend’s tragedy. It seemed to be as though they were looking for some type of contact-high.
I see the same thing in events like this.
I will say that public expressions of grief are a lot more welcome when they aren’t coming from those who up until the incident that caused the grief were
n’tknown for disparaging the victims or people like them.That should have been “those who up until the incident … were known”
and if that’s something you can fix for me in the original post I’d be grateful
nm, even with your correction…
what?
Is this a cryptic allusion to something that happened to you, or some kind of socio-political statement?
I just don’t understand what you mean. I can be dense, you know.
Does grief now need to be public in order to be real?
What a powerful, meaty question. I got so into my response that it turned into a post. Oops. So I decided to go ahead and post the full thing on my blog and just give a shorter (yes, it IS shorter than it was, smart a$$) answer here.
Nearly 4 years ago I lost both my parents within 6 days of each other, as well as my job, home, career and dreams a few weeks later. So I have a pretty good idea what grief is. I know I struggled with this question a lot at that time because in the beginning I felt only moments of agony (grief) followed by long stretches of quiet nothingness and thought perhaps I was so disconnected from my own self and emotions to properly grieve my parents. Because I didn’t cry at their memorial services I thought there was something really, really wrong with me.
There wasn’t. I was just in the “shock” stage of grief – and I’ve also since realized that I can no more predict how I will react in the face of painful, terrible loss than I can predict the weather in Tennessee. Nothing is normal so everything is normal.
The movie “The Queen” addresses this issue in a way that really made me re-think how I looked at the Royal Family during the public mourning of Diana’s death. And it reminded me of how most of my own grief has been quite (blessedly) private.
Most of what I see today in the way of public grieving is, in my mind, more pof either an emotional mob mentality grief, or a misplaced focus of grief.
What I mean by the first is like what you see in preschool when one kid is really crying out of hurt or fear and the rest of the group follows suit. It’s not that the other kids are faking it (if you’ve had to deal with this lovely phenomena, you know they’re not!), its just that the first child’s pain is so real and powerful that the rest become frightened to tears by the possibility that something that bad is coming for them too and the only way they know now to respond is to cry hysterically.
Sometimes the power of someone’s grief – or of a tragic event – touches some wound, some fear or some pain at the core of who we are. We cannot identify that thing that was touched, we only know the touching caused searing pain or overwhelming fear and we respond with powerful emotions of our own, that others (and sometimes we) mistake for grief.
What I mean by the second is that all too often we in America (or perhaps its all of western society) are, I think, convinced grief is about the people we lose whether we know them or not when nothing could be further from the truth. Grief is not about them, it is about us. It’s about what WE have lost. We grieve for ourselves and how our lives will never be the same because of what we have lost.
Nor is grief limited to people. It’s also about dreams, jobs, careers, homes, cities and towns, places, things, ideals… anything we have lost that deeply meant something to us. Our national grief over September 11th, what we who didn’t know anyone in the Towers lost as individuals and truly grieved was our sense of security, our sense of safety in our own homes, workplaces and towns, our sense of immortality, our innocence of the realities of war…. But because it’s socially unacceptable to grieve these seemingly selfish and trivial things when thousands have lost parents, siblings, spouses, children, lovers and dear friends, we take our grief and (mis)place it onto people we don’t know and claim we mourn their loss.
That is not to say that we don’t grieve with the families who lost people they loved in the Towers, or at the Unversity this week. We feel for them; we feel sadness and empathy for the loss in their lives of the ones they love. BUT What we grieve personally is whatever we personally, intimately lost in that tragedy, and for most of us it isn’t people.
I think another thing we grieve, but (mis)place onto anonymous people, is our loss/lack of deep connection with others. I don’t think we have that really anymore in our society. Oh, everybody wears their “feelings on their sleeves” so-to-speak, yet very few really have truly deep relationships, ones where feelings can be expressed without fear. And we all know it. Deep inside, we know it. The made-public death of a fellow-anything (student, co-worker, artist, etc), reminds our souls of that deep longing for real connection, real satisfying relationships, and grief over our own dissatisfaction bubbles to the surface. The current love-affair with public grieving gives us a free pass to cry and scream and get hysterical (to feel, in other words) as well as a safe way to grieve our own loss/lack of deep relationships without appearing self-centered in a moment of such tragedy for others.
The number of politicians who spent years campaigning for this or that office in this or that locality on a platform that could generally be summarized as “I’m not like those effete liberal northeastern godless multiethnic homosexual welfare chislers in the big cities where no one has any family values or work ethic and by the way they tend to be un-American there, not like you good voters here” but who nevertheless showed up for photo-ops where the towers used to be and paraded their grief is pretty staggering. This continues to be a very painful topic for me.
And I’ll bet that there are a number of politicians in Virginia who have made parts of their careers out of sneering at universities and their students who will be first in line to do the public mourning thing there.
who nevertheless showed up for photo-ops where the towers used to be and paraded their grief
I think this is part of where I was going with it…
I think there’s a difference between REAL grief and Showy “grief” to achieve some sort of ulterior motive.
I’m reminded of the foolishness of those who wanted us to wear black armbands in mourning for Dumbledore.
Grief and Gun Control
I have noticed that a plethora of topics have arisen to the surface since the Virginia Tech tragedy on Monday. Among these topics are two fundamental, but major, topics – grief and gun violence and control. I will try to
I think it’s more like Dolores Umbridge wearing a black armband in mourning for Dumbledore. One is just a fairly goofy blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality; the other is a particularly nasty form of hypocrisy.
I think another thing we grieve, but (mis)place onto anonymous people, is our loss/lack of deep connection with others.
….
But because it’s socially unacceptable to grieve these seemingly selfish and trivial things when thousands have lost parents, siblings, spouses, children, lovers and dear friends, we take our grief and (mis)place it onto people we don’t know and claim we mourn their loss.
—–
I guess this is what I have a problem with. I think you’re right about misplaced grief and the human need to feel grief. But many people DID lose family members in 9/11 and on the VTech campus. And I can’t help but feel that grief is probably far sharper and bitter than any grief I may feel over a lost job or fractured friendship.
To use your analogy of the children on the playground, there IS one child who is hurt and bleeding. When all the children cry out, I think this trivialises the actual hurt of the wounded child. When everybody cried on 9/11 it seemed to trivialise the losses of those who had actual friends and family members die.
I wish there were more words for “grief”, because I think we all feel grief and express grief.
And no, to address Eric and dolphin’s considerations from earlier, I’m not saying that people should or shouldn’t have some type of response. I’m just trying to gauge for myself what the appropriateness of response is. I never know what to say to people who’ve lost beloved pets or parents or children, because I don’t think I can even reach the depths of what I imagine their sorrow is. In the past I wouldn’t say anything at all, because I thought my whole attitude–even though I was truly, genuinely sorry for their pain–came off as “well, sorry about that. Too bad. Sucks for you.” Even though I don’t feel that way at all. I’ve been known to cry desperately behind closed doors for someone else’s pain yet be wholly unable to say anything to their face because I’m so overwhelmed by what I imagine their losses must feel like. (That happens whenever anyone I know loses a pet or family member.)
So I guess I just don’t get the opposite, the whole rending-of-garments thing.
I think it’s more like Dolores Umbridge wearing a black armband in mourning for Dumbledore.
I thought you were one of the non-Harry Potter readers….
One is just a fairly goofy blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality; the other is a particularly nasty form of hypocrisy.
But the other does include an unhealthy dose of fantasy. The whole “I hate New Yorkers, but today we’re ALL New Yorkers” thing requires that we imagine anti-Semetic, homophobic people to be really nice and compassionate in spite of all previous evidence to the contrary.
There are times when I definitely question the motives of others, and believe me, if you’d had my mother as your mother, you guys (sorry gals [I was born and raised in NW Illinois]; you’re included as well! *g*) would too. The woman taught me the true meaning of hypocrisy — by direct example. I vowed, at a very young age, to be the complete opposite of her, and I truly hope that I’m succeeding.
That being said, I’m the type who feels things far more deeply than I wish I did! Long-distance commercials routinely move me to tears. (How embarrassing!) Lifetime movies can start me crying uncontollably. Have you ever watched the movie “Selena?” Or “Muriel’s Wedding?” I’ve seen them both a jillion times, and I still weep buckets and keep Puffs Plus in business every time I watch one of those movies again. Seeing someone else in severe emotional pain evokes an uncontrollable empathetic response. I’ve been through quite a bit in my lifetime, and I can usually identify with people in a personal manner on some level. When someone I know and care about hurts, I hurt. When they cry, I cry (I try to keep it together until I’m alone, though, unless we share the exact same grief at the exact same time).
I knew someone who was killed on 9/11. She was on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. I hadn’t met her in person yet; that was slated to happen the following month, when I was scheduled for major surgery. She planned to visit me in the hospital. Although my surgery was major, it wasn’t something that was going to kill me immediately (although I would supposedly endure fewer permanent neurological problems the sooner I had the surgery). I still couldn’t keep the same surgery date, though. I had to postpone until a few months later. Many people didn’t understand that, but I hadn’t realized how much I was looking forward to meeting Barbara in person until I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I had recurring dreams of myself in my hospital bed, constantly looking up and hoping that she would walk through my door at any minute. I was extremely depressed, and I knew that it wouldn’t be the best time for having major surgery, as the depression and accompanying anxiety would likely impede my recovery.
Nobody understood that, since we were “only” Internet and phone pals. But to me, a connection is a connection is a connection. We were simply friends who hadn’t met yet. Not having met in person was nothing but a formality, and in this case, completely irrelevant. I still talked to my mother back then (reluctantly), and she accused me of trying to bring attention to myself with my actions. (This is one of the reasons that I no longer have contact with my mother; this is what she does, and always has done. It was textbook projection on her part, as it often is, and it made my already-horrific headache even worse!) Having my motives questioned really upset me. Even being accused of having “motives” really upset me. And no, my mother was not worried about what would happen to me by postponing the surgery. (I wish!) She had never believed me when I told her my symptoms, and she didn’t believe my diagnosis anyway. She had accused me of being a hypochondriac (typical) and a “drug-seeker” (also typical) for decades! I have a congenital brain malformation, which causes the cerebrospinal fluid to become blocked, and the pressure from that blockage builds up, and it is not pleasant. My constant headaches began when I was a teenager. But whenever I sought help, since I hadn’t whacked my head, and since migraine preparations didn’t work — well, I must not really have a headache! I was simply behaving as all good little “drug-seekers” do, so I was shown the door with no relief whatsoever. (I was generally in more pain when I left than I was when I arrived, thanks to the uncomfortable hours-long wait and the aggravation.)
Righty-O! Brain surgery in exchange for really great drugs? Oh yeah. Wow — she caught me! She’s brilliant! I know tons of people who have brain surgery in order to get drugs! Not quite. The possibility of uncontrollable post-operative brain-swelling disallows the use of “good drugs.” The pain was huge, and the pain relief was almost non-existent. I couldn’t move my head for a week, I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to cry all the time, but it hurt too much! That was my second brain surgery, so I knew ahead of time what I was about to get myself into.
Being judged, as my mother judged me, was painful — even though I knew how she was. I try very hard to believe the best of others and to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I do still try not to let people walk all over me. It’s like walking a tightrope at times! But knowing the emotional pain that I’ve been caused (and so many others who have experenced the same thing), I desperately try not to judge. Grief is definitely unpredictable, if nothing else.
~Namaste~
nm – OK, gotcha.
Although, I leave just a little room for transformation.
Someone very close to me held, at one time, the most vile racist views imaginable.
One religious conversion later, you’d have a hard time recognizing this person. A complete, and heartfelt, transformation.
BUT, we both have the same contempt for opportunistic politicians.
One day, at another time, I’d be interested in whether you consider simply voting a certain way as saying the things you commented about.
For instance, one could be accused of hating the poor because he does not support governmental solutions to poverty, even though he works tirelessly with non-governmental anti-poverty groups.
But, I don’t want to hijack Kat’s post.
Kat,
I understand where you’re coming from. I never know what to say to people, either. I just kind of stand there, with a sad look on my face, speechless – afraid that anything I said would offend them and come across as though I didn’t care. So I’ve just adopted the philosophy to shake their hand/hug them, try to show that I care, and then go on…what else can you do? What else can you say? “I’m sorry”? Like you pointed out – that seems so cold and indifferent.
And I also agree with you, Lu. I do feel that our society has become more and more disengaged and unattached on a personal level…partly due to (and correct me if I’m wrong) high-tech lifestyles…some people would rather talk on a cell phone than face-to-face.
KC: I’m a Harry Potter reader, but a casual one.
Slarti: I, too, leave room for transformation. I can even see that a tragic and violent event is more than likely to be a catalyst for transformation in some individuals. That said, I’m gonna go with the concept that a truly transformed person will apologize to me before telling me s/he feels my pain. And, if said transformed person is a politician, I’m going to expect a changed rhetorical style and even, perhaps, some changes in votes. Otherwise, I call bullshit. And as for whether voting a certain way is equivalent to supporting certain hateful political views, it depends on the circumstance. There are plenty of people in gov’t who make decisions that I regard as wrongheaded but who aren’t out there making speeches about what a traitor or cancer on the community/body politic I am, ya know?
nm, That’s quite reasonable.
(Like I’m some paragon of reason… 🙂 )
KC: I’m a Harry Potter reader, but a casual one.
Didn’t know they made those… ;-p
I’m gonna go with the concept that a truly transformed person will apologize to me before telling me s/he feels my pain. And, if said transformed person is a politician, I’m going to expect a changed rhetorical style and even, perhaps, some changes in votes. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
I’d say that’s a pretty safe benchmark. Otherwise it starts to look like a jailhouse conversion.
sorry gals [I was born and raised in NW Illinois]
The Midwest rocks.
But to me, a connection is a connection is a connection. We were simply friends who hadn’t met yet. Not having met in person was nothing but a formality, and in this case, completely irrelevant.
Hey, here in blogland where we all “know” each other long before we’ve met, I think pretty much everyone gets where you’re coming from on this one.
I desperately try not to judge. Grief is definitely unpredictable, if nothing else.
I’m very much of the “not judging” persuasion, but sometimes when I use my impressions of an event to think about my own life (as I do here) it comes off like I’m judging everybody else. I don’t mean to be. I’m trying to look at the event and the various responses to the event in order to feel out what my own response should be.
I don’t mean that I can’t do my own thinking or feeling. I just become more aware as I get older that I don’t often rightly communicate my actual thoughts and feelings. Does the world understand my very real sympathy better if I say nothing, wear an armband, create a memorial or write a poem? These are the questions I ask myself.
Then I ask myself…how much does it matter that the world understand me if the grief and the experience of that grief isn’t my own? Why am I being so self-absorbed about this?
And on and on down the rabbit hole of introspection, which can itself be an exercise in selfishness.
To use your analogy of the children on the playground, there IS one child who is hurt and bleeding. When all the children cry out, I think this trivialises the actual hurt of the wounded child.
See, I disagree with you there. If the others truly are crying (and not just making a show of it) because of their own fear and pain, it doesn’t trivialize the first – it merely drives home the power of the emotions of the first.
It also shows us how interconnected we really are…
When everybody cried on 9/11 it seemed to trivialise the losses of those who had actual friends and family members die.
Again, I disgree. I cried buckets in the weeks after 9/11 – most of it over my own fears and losses. God used 9/11 to confirm he wanted me to serve him overseas among Muslims. I cried because I was afraid – and rather thought my God was crazy. I cried because my sense of safety died. I cried because my heart broke for the thousands who lost someone in the Towers. I cried for those IN the Towers and how horrible it must have been for them. I cried because my heart broke for the terrorists – yeah, you read that right. They had no idea what they were really doing. They thought they were doing a great thing that Allah would honor. But they were wrong. So very wrong. And they died for it. How tragic! How horrible for them as they stood before God with bloody hands! Even though God is so gracious and merciful and loving – His very presence convicts our hearts to the core. Can you imagine their pain and horror over what they’ve just done?? (Same goes for the student responsible for all the deaths at VT.)
My tears in no way trivialize anyone. Kat, we ALL lost something that day and just because what some of us lost doesn’t seem in “social” terms to be something as significant as a beloved person doesn’t mean we don’t feel the loss just as deeply and powerfully. Think of how losing our sense of safety has profoundly impacted the entire nation and how we live our lives and how we see the world. That kind of impact doesn’t happen from “trivial” losses. Losing my dream of being a missionary 4 years ago was just as painful as the loss of my parents. It just affected a different part of my heart.
I’ve been known to cry desperately behind closed doors for someone else’s pain yet be wholly unable to say anything to their face because I’m so overwhelmed by what I imagine their losses must feel like.
Oh please let them see those tears, even though I know its hard for you! One of my greatest moments of comfort after my parents died was when a friend of mine just stood there and cried, just wept, as she listened to me talk on and on about my losses. She didn’t say a word, just cried with me. That meant more to me than all the other kind words and pieces of wisdom people had said to me. When my next time of intense grief comes along, I hope you will share your tears with me, because they will bring much so much more strength and comfort than a thousand words, and I need them.
Yes, I realize there are those drama queens out there (and I include the men in that term) who are all melodramatic and such, but I think that their grief is a mask for their fears. But they don’t want to be seen as weak, or self-centered, so they turn their tears of fear into tears of “grief” for the dead. Perhaps some are really good actors and really are just looking for attention, but I think they are rare. I think most of the melodrama comes from a desperate attempt to hide fear. Despite the face the GW Bush wants to show the world, Sep 11th struck fear into the heart of every American. How could it not? Virgina Tech does much the same thing to students and parents, though on a much smaller scale. I’m convinced the tears are real, its just that the emotion behind them is mislabeled. Either way, neither one trivializes the pain the families and students feel.
The Midwest rocks.
You bet your Midwestern “non-accent” it does!
😉
Even though I moved down here when I was 13, I’ve worked diligently on not getting a Southern accent. I did a good job! I was eyeballing a future in broadcast journalism, and my “Galva accent” is perfect for that purpose! I changed my mind about my career, several times, but I like to know that I still sound like a Midwesterner. Galva is still “home” to me — my hometown. I adore going back for visits, and I often seriously contemplate moving back there eventually.
I understand completely that you were not judging, but merely contemplating. (If it makes you feel better, I didn’t think you came across as being judgmental at all!) My own mind tends to wander all over the place, and winds up “outside the box” more often than not. Being introspective isn’t selfish! If you don’t know yourself, and aren’t true to yourself in every way (especially internally!), how could you ever be helpful or “fully there” for anyone else? The world would be a far better place if more people asked themselves the same types of questions, and answered themselves honestly. So — “BRAVA!”
Keep hopping down those rabbit holes! Just keep an eye on the opening so you can hop back up when you’re needed! I think that your friends and loved ones would find that to be more than fair. If I couldn’t hop down my own rabbit hole at times, if only to contemplate my navel if I so desired, I’d go stark raving mad!
This has been a crazy day for me, and it was only tonight that I saw Dolphin’s response to my comment in the other thread. I just responded briefly to it there.
I haven’t questioned anyone’s motives for doing anything. As I just got through saying at the other post, nothing I wrote applied in any way to the people who are directly involved with the tragedy, personally or through a friend or family member. They are obviously experiencing a whole different kind of grief.
I simply said — and I stand by it — that some purely-symbolic responses to tragedy seem gimmicky to me, and that there are practical and constructive things we could be doing instead in our own communities. I also said, and people conveniently ignored, that there is a place for symbolism. I just think our society does too much of it, because it’s easier than trying to actually trying to change things. Is that judgmental of me? Maybe so.
It is true, as John Donne implied, that when the bell of tragedy tolls for any of us it tolls for all of us. But from a practical standpoint, we have to choose what to grieve over. How many people died yesterday in the city, county or state where you live? How many of those people died tragically young or in unexpected circumstances? If you were to grieve for each of them you would never be able to function as a human being. Certain tragedies capture our imagination and bring us grief in ways that others do not. That is natural, and understandable, and unavoidable. No one who is human can hear about 32 college students being gunned down in their prime and not be touched. But how we respond to that second-hand grief, that CNN grief, is the question here. I suggested, and I stand by it, that we should look for positive and practical steps rather than symbolic ones. I don’t think that makes me a cold-hearted SOB, but obviously some people disagree.
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I suggested, and I stand by it, that we should look for positive and practical steps rather than symbolic ones. I don’t think that makes me a cold-hearted SOB, but obviously some people disagree.
John – for what it’s worth, Emily and I have been expressing much the same sentiment in a thread over at John H.’s:
I don’t think there’s anything so-called “wrong” with the gesture, and more power to anyone who wants to participate in the day of silence. I just feel there’s probably better and more productive ways to address the situation and my only real problem with it is the expectation that “everyone” should participate. (shrug)
I wish everybody could see the ocean of Orange and Maroon covering the state of Virginia today. It’s really very powerful.
I don’t know if there’s been any national campaign to elicit donations, but if you want to donate to the United Way for the region, they have set up a “Caring Fund for Victims of the VA Tech Tragedy” that will be used to cover funeral expenses, transportation for family members, and mental health services support. I’m hoping, though it wasn’t listed explicitly on their website that the some of the money will be going to cover medical expenses of those wounded.
My understanding is that United Way is covering the administrative costs through their general fund so 100% of the donations to the Caring Fund for Victims of the VA Tech Tragedy will be used to help the victims and families of the victims.
http://www.unitedwaynrv.org/Details.asp?ContentID=2137355581&TOCID=-1267001892
Kat, if you feel it’s appropriate, could you make a new post out of this so more people will see it. I think it’s pertinent to the “practical vs symbolic” discussion that was happening in this post.
Want to start your private office arms race right now?
I just got my own USB rocket launcher 🙂 Awsome thing.
Plug into your computer and you got a remote controlled office missile launcher with 360 degrees horizontal and 45 degree vertival rotation with a range of more than 6 meters – which gives you a coverage of 113 square meters round your workplace.
You can get the gadget here: http://tinyurl.com/2qul3c
Check out the video they have on the page.
Cheers
Marko Fando