Tag: mental illness

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Mourning A National Tragedy

We’re in shock this morning. Our hearts go out to the victims of the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, and the lives that have been changed forever. We’re mourning a national tragedy.

This is a national day of mourning
GRIEVING FOR THE VICTIMS OF THIS WEEKEND OF TRAGEDY

Why do these things happen? I don’t remember any mass shootings while  raising my children. Some  presidential candidates are now politicizing the shootings.  But forty years ago  we had Democrats and Republicans and Jim Crow Laws and the Vietnam War.  Mental illness was widely prevalent,  but  poorly understood or treated.  And there was very little gun control.

This is what we didn’t have: the internet.  There were no violent video games so readily available, desensitizing young men to violence.  No one had a Facebook account,  where people could brag and make other people envious. There was no Instagram or Twitter where you could publicly  shame or bully someone to the point of suicide.   Now, Instead of face to face relationships and real  conversations, everyone just texts.  We’ve almost forgotten  what it’s like to talk to a real live person.

Technology has changed our world and done wondrous things for our society.  But it’s also dehumanized us to the point where violence has become the norm.

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HOW LONG CAN YOU HOLD A GRUDGE?

Last year’s shooting of the newspaper staff in Annapolis got me thinking about the downside of  holding a grudge.  I doubt if there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t feel some resentment  over a long ago insult or perceived wrong.  How long can you hold a grudge?

 
I held a secret grudge for many years against a young man whom I overheard jeering, and saying I was “crazy” at a teenage party. This was right  after my older sister had a mental breakdown that required hospitalization.  His words were like a razor across my heart. There was a huge stigma surrounding mental illness in those days (still is). His taunts reinforced the assumption that I was “tarred with the same brush” as my sister, as the saying goes. Thank God there was no Facebook, or I might have been bullied into suicide.  Soon after, I went away to college and started a new life in Chicago upon graduation.

Fast forward: twenty years later.  I’m back in my hometown with a new job, and I’m seeing this guy at public events and social gatherings more often than I would like.  At first, I managed to avoid him.  But then I would see him again, and the knot in my stomach told me I was still holding a grudge for that long ago incident. It was not pleasant; I hadn’t felt that way for a long time, so I took another look at this man, and realized he wasn’t really a monster, just an ordinary guy fighting serious health problems and a failing business. He had probably forgotten making  such cruel remarks, and  hopefully, he had matured enough that he would not do it again.

Then I remembered the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.  “Hate is too great a burden to bear, so I chose love.” I won’t say I began to love my former detractor, but carrying a grudge was too great a burden for me to bear, so I let it go.

The scary thing about grudges is that they become a self defeating obsession. https://medium.com/productivity-revolution/6-reasons-why-holding-grudges-makes-you-unhappy-7e2198de26fe In the case of the Annapolis shooter, he  preferred killing 5 people and living the rest of his life in prison, to letting go of that grudge.