Need to vent some…
After such a great day yesterday, comes a day of gloom and horror. We’ve had rain most of the day and with that, overcast conditions that resemble twilight hours than any normal daylight. Worse than that though, was in viewing my news websites at work of the events that occurred today at Virginia Tech.
I am friends with someone who is a proud alumnus of VT. I think he left work early today.
My venting or "steam release" deals with people who need to make jokes about situations whilst they continue to develop. Someone at lunch today had to make a comment saying, “Oh, it was probably that [certain disgraced VT football player] who came back to shoot people…” I’m glad my aforementioned friend wasn’t at the table. I’ve seen him pretty much verbally gut a person who made a snide remark about VT in regards to that player. Bad eggs can be found at any university and in any football program. I’m not familiar with any of that stuff. I just know that when there are 31 people dead with just as many injured and no one knows why, it is not a time to joke or make ludicrous references. If my friend would have been there, I know I would have seen a punch in the mouth.
Besides football, VT and WVU have some relationships. Both have strong engineering schools. Many West Virginians will either go to WVU or to VT. Chances are strong for me that I know someone who may know someone involved in the tragedy. Concerning that jokester, I wish people would be more considerate, especially when things are so fresh.
My secondary venting has to do with my current view of humanity. I do not view it positively. I spent part of the weekend reading about the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day which was Sunday. Reading personal stories from the holocaust survivors is heart-wrenching. We like to say “never again” but we’ve had other episodes of genocide: the Pol-Pot Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Bosnia just a few years ago, also Rwanda, and of course the unfortunately forgotten current situation in Darfur/Sudan.
Despite all of our technology and education, we sure know how to cruelly torture and kill each other. It seems like places of education in the past few years have fallen victim to certain people’s desire to destroy life. Schools. There were the little Amish children; a shooting at my own school, Duquesne University, last year; the usage of schools in Rwanda to kill entire groups and tribes; and of course, there’s one word—Columbine.
I’ve always taken education seriously. Schools were places where I, and hopefully others, could learn to better oneself, discover things outside of our environments; yet feel somewhat safe in that exploration. Even though some of my school experiences were sometimes nasty; generally, I do feel fortunate that I was able to excel despite my original environmental limitations.
I hate the fact that I sit in a nice office all day while there is so much pain in the world—and unfortunately, one doesn’t have to look too far. I feel useless and I want and need to do “something”. Very conversely, I feel that I do not want to deal with anyone at all in general since most people seem innately selfish and will "do you in" one way or another: I’m holding my ground—stay away from me. Then there’re times in which “I don’t care that I don’t care”, and I don’t like this attitude that I’m finding more re-occurant within.
I still have some things to keep me in check. Christian spirituality tells me that I must be involved and involving even though I don’t want to be. Psychology informs me that things happen in the mind/brain/emotion/cognition—some conditions can be understood and rectified—and therefore I need to perhaps try to understand someone’s possible mental journey.
The cognitive psychology people (as well as some existential phenomenologists) say how our attitudes form us. Man, I would like to have just a few grains of John Paul II’s attitude. Almost right after his election, I’ll never forget hearing him telling his fellow Poles still in Communist rule to “be not afraid….” He lived through two oppressive regimes, he knew the kind of life, the situation that they lived and live. He knew how to “witness to hope”. I just at least want to “dare to hope”.
But to me this is useless while I sit behind a desk in a nice office. Words are nice to say but they must be matched with action. And my impotence of being is currently corpulent and soggy. (Like, what else can it be in that state?) Just what can I, or any average Joe, do? Or course a good existentialist would add, “and where is your world so to act?”
Time to go to bed so I can get up tomorrow and go sit behind a desk. Some tonight will not have any sound sleep.
