Love and Loss
The blog has been dark this week for a variety of reasons.
I’m not the only one. Many other writers I know just…don’t know how, in this time.
We got news of a friend who was in the hospital under some horrific circumstances last Saturday. Whenever I thought about writing, nothing seemed, well, worth it. All of my talking about love and life and practice seemed to be sandcastles in the face of a rising tide of hatred, intolerance, and general bad behavior by people who do know better, but just don’t care.
Then the school shooting happened.
And it felt even more futile to try and write anything. About life, about love.
Giving Up is a Privilege
It would be easier to quit. It may be the height of self-aggrandizement to think that it’s worth putting pixel to screen and that it can make any difference.
But giving up is the luxury of those who don’t have to worry about it. It’s the flip side of “those who know and don’t care”. It means that I can’t just shrug and say it’s not going to change; it’s up to me advocate with my voice and my vote for gun control. It’s up to me to examine my family’s tradition of firearm ownership, and what that is contributing to the issue. It’s up to me to do all those things.
But today is about love, and there’s something else that it’s up to me to do, as urged by one of the survivors of the shooting.
In the words of Senior Jack Haimowitz:
“I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to one of my best friends. … If there’s anything that needs to be said right now, it’s that when you shut this TV off, you have to go home and tell every single person you know you love them, because you never know when your last time is going to be.”
And now I’m back to not knowing what to write. So I’m going to close the laptop and follow his suggestion.
I hope you do the same.
