I’ll Tell You How

I have tons of work at work to do, but all I can find myself doing is flipping back every half hour for updates on the Virgina Tech school shooting.

It must be like Christmas morning for reporters and newscasters when big shit like this goes down. All the scrambling, interviewing, updating directly after an event and then the teeth-pulling post analysis with the parade of experts, witnesses, and everyone basically muttering the same version of ‘he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy’ and/or ‘i don’t understand how this could happen in our little town.’

I’ll tell you how. It happens because we are all trained to know what to do if we are on fire (stop, drop, and roll!) and if there is a tornado or earthquake, but we remain stupidly silent in teaching people survival strategies for shit that happens far, far more often: i.e. “i feel overwhelmed” or “i’m really angry and don’t know why” or “i’m totally isolated, even and especially when surrounded by lots of people” or “i don’t know how to stop or deal with something that someone is doing to me over and over”.

Add to that an overworked populace with no time or energy left after the 40+ hour work-week- with-two-weeks-off- a-year, to relax, check in with each other, etc. Also through a culture that discourages half the population (men) from asking for help in dealing with anything intangible (if a man can’t stop the car to ask for directions, why could we expect him to be able to seek help with something far more serious?).