The targeted shooting and murder of Charlie Kirk in Utah has caused me to stop my normal routine. I find it important to stand witness through the process of grief that another human has harmed another human being.
so I remain trapped within the news cycle. I do try and self-protect in the avalanche of misinformation and the rapid search for conclusions when we just don’t know yet what or why we are here. I listen to the news channels, and I read sub stack. I often have to scroll quickly through the feed when readers move away from our human grief connection. I refuse to become trapped in harmful judgements. I move quickly away so I don’t feel their rage or blame. I try to follow the facts and move with the current information. It is the only way I can bear witness to this violence.
One person’s life is lost prematurely; they will no longer define their influence. Others take over their story and start defining them, for good and for bad. Their family is now adrift in this sensation of loss, this new whirlwind of emptiness. Their family is forced to redefine their world, forced to create a new purpose without their loved one.
As the news cycle goes on, we see the tireless work of law enforcement investigators. We observe their exhaustive search for truth. When life is taken, it’s impossible to find justice. I join them and the reporters grappling with the fact that someone has died by the hand of another. By learning the activity that ends with actively taking a person’s life, I touch that part of the human consciousness that is not made by our better angels. Instead I am touching the underbelly of being human. The place where one person loses sight of their own moral center. The time when a person loses connection to the humanity of the person they’ve decided on needs eradication. They forget that the other isn’t an enemy but a person like themselves.
Then in sadness we learn the identity of that person who has committed this crime. There is no relief from the pain. Because now we are face to face with them and their families who are also in this sea of loss. There’s no reason for this behavior no matter how we try. I hear “this can’t be us” but it is us. This loss of all these human lives is also our loss. We are all one misguided thought, one missed misguided influence from going down this wrong road. It is the time for empathy, not a time for blame or vitriol.
While the media was concerned with the progress of this investigation of one shooting death, a retired ATF investigator say that there is another 120-person harmed by gun violence every day. Every day, approximately 250 will have to live with wounds, scars and trauma from gun shots. No wonder the weight of this world has become so heavy.
thoughts keeping me awake 