A Teen’s Take on Terrorism
“The first step to fighting terrorism is …”
As professionals in homeland security, a headline that includes the words ‘Teens fictional take on terrorism” stops everything at the moment. The article by the Oregonian features high school freshman Lindsey Williams for winning a national writing award.
The piece did a stellar job of characterizing the ‘precocious’ teen as a voracious reader, gifted writer, old soul, and by all accounts, 14-year-old Lindsey is also a victim of terrorism.
She wrote about being afraid after the Paris attacks. Let’s face it, that attack caused chills for many people in America and Europe.
“You can write from pure fear,” the article recounted of the interview with the young writer. “I wanted to put the reader in the mind of a young child that does not comprehend the complexities and wants to impose her own logic…the complete lack of rationality of the world in the end takes away her childhood.”
Although the piece explained succinctly that the heady young writer had written the short story in response to her own fear, WeSeeHSE dug deeper into the terrorism component. Specifically, we wanted to learn more about the effects of terrorism on teens and how we might better address them. WeSeeHSE chatted with Lindsey to gain some insight.
Lindsey is quick to credit the private school she attends as having played a key role in shaping her response to the November 2015 Paris attacks. A school which boasts an open learning environment where students are encouraged to explore their own interests and teachers serve to facilitate the process by providing guidance — a school that nurtures independent thinking and celebrates innovation.
Homeland security professionals across the country are exploring innovative solutions to what terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman refers to as the unconventional threat — the global threat of ISIS and other extremists. An unconventional threat warrants an unconventional solution.
Lindsey brings a very unconventional approach to her take on terrorism, one that deserves attention.
The following is something she wrote for WeSeeHSE. We hope you enjoy her contribution as much as we did.
My name is Lindsey Williams, and I wrote a short story about terrorism.
Over the past few months, I’ve received a significant amount of attention from people in the community over this; the piece was submitted to a national competition and was recognized, leading to some excitement. Most questions I receive are centered around the topic I chose. Many people ask me what I was thinking, in writing about terrorism — what my motives were.
Let me explain. I wrote the short story in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, which took place in November of last year. The day after they occurred, my teachers sat down with the students and had a discussion about it. This was one of the most helpful things they could have done, in that they supported a dialogue between us, allowing us to process the attacks and think clearly about them. We were not left alone. It was in that conversation that I had the idea for my piece; the motive for its creation stemmed from an urge to understand.
Writing is and must always be cathartic. I felt what most did when the attacks happened, and the short story that emerged was chiefly because of those feelings. “Letters of a Girl” was an exercise in fear. The pain and indignation that we felt and still feel for the victims went into its creation; it was at least a more productive response than lashing out. Creation is a counterweight to destruction; writing in the face of violence is both action and reaction, attack and defense. It’s a method of vocalizing and rationalizing emotional responses without delegitimizing them, and makes room for more reflective thought.
The pen is perhaps not mightier than the sword, but far more powerful. For example, a difficulty in teaching about terrorism is describing it to children; an advantage in speaking about it through fiction is fiction’s inherent comprehensibility. A child will not understand the Syrian civil war, but they can understand a story about a little girl and her dead grandmother. There is emotion there — a kind of catharsis — that is universal. There is no comfort in ignorance, especially because ignorance of the world will not assuage these children’s fears of it — what’s paramount is approaching it at the emotional level, which is not only the root of the problem, but also a level that children can grasp. Children aren’t unintelligent; they can understand emotional interactions well. We have an obligation to help them in understanding these kinds of events, and in emphasizing understanding, we can emphasize the importance of compassion. Reinforce the importance of sympathy. Convey the brutality of attack, and the difficulty in finding appropriate retribution. It is difficult to empathize in times of fear and anger, but it has always taken more strength to be compassionate than to be cruel.
We cannot write away our problems in the Middle East, of course. But what answers are there? Muddled as the situation is by failed attempts at solvency in the past and the ongoing conflict, there is no straightforward answer to terrorism. We ask in vain for miracles while any attempt to change the situation seems to compound the suffering of all those involved. I would choose an analytical approach. Only through fostering critical evaluation of terrorists and their victims can we prevent irrational responses to their crimes. They are cruel, and unjustified, they cannot be glorified, nor can we justify mindless slaughter in the name of revenge. The solution isn’t one of dealing with terrorists but of dealing with fear, which makes us nigh incapable of productive decisions. The first step to fighting terrorism is to defeat terror.
