We are all Orlando

Despite a long string of bloody attacks on average Americans going through their motions of daily life over the past decade, none of us expected to hear the news of a massacre of so many of our fellow human beings Sunday morning. Today has been a particularly brutal Monday. The flags are at half-mast. The news and radio stations were full of images or audio clips of crying mothers and friends mourning their slaughtered loved ones in Orlando, and condolences and prayers for those directly affected by the tragedy have saturated all media, social or otherwise. Whether or not we were part of this attack, Americans collectively woke up to a broken morning-after, with the fear and devastation making it possibly the worst morning-after in the history of morning-afters.

As details about the tragedy came in, those of us with very little connection to the victims in Orlando felt a guilty sense of relief that this horror had happened so far away. But that relief quickly gave way to fear as we realized that just by going about our daily lives, we, too, could easily have been the target of such determined hate. Whether at church, school, a grocery store, a military base, a movie theater, a community center, an office party, a bar, at the airport or on a commercial flight - we realize that as we go through the motions of our life, we, too, could be attacked in the same senseless manner. We are forced into the scary admission that a truly horrific event – awful and crushing and terrifying - has, in effect, happened to ALL OF US. 

And then our fear began to morph into a need for action, spurring a hopeful aftermath in the wake of this awful act of violence. In the past twenty-four hours we have seen the lines of people wrapping around blood banks waiting to donate, and several of us have gone to our own local donation centers. We’ve read hateful comments toward Muslims, and been relieved to read or hear words from Muslims and Muslim leaders condemning this deeply disturbed terrorist’s actions. We’ve changed our profile pictures to stand with Orlando and the LBGT community as a whole. We’ve done online searches for how to talk to our kids about the tragedy. Petitions are circulating to get changes made to our gun laws. People are silently screaming blame on social media because there has to be some outlet for their feelings of outrage, hopelessness, helplessness and fear. And behind the sadness and the seething, beneath all our worry and fear and hand-wringing and prayers, we are all vowing that as American citizens, we will not stand for any more of this kind of violence.

And that’s just it. The vast majority of people in the United States DO NOT stand for this kind of violence. Whether we own weapons or not, 99.99 percent of Americans DO NOT CONDONE this kind of violence toward our fellow human beings and want to prevent this scenario from ever happening again. This common ground - the collective WANT to never again have to deal with a mass killing like this - unites us.

A post on social media said “Mass shootings are caused by 2 things: #1, Because someone decided to go kill a lot of people for [a multitude of reasons] but does it really f*cking matter; #2 They have guns… which one can we fix?” When you think about it, we can’t really make great strides at fixing either of those two things quickly. Both these things do indeed cause mass shootings, but if #1 is an issue, it really does f*cking matter and the means a person will use to kill a lot of people is irrelevant. That person will use their pilot’s license, their pressure cooker, some easily accessible chemicals mixed together in just the right way in the trunk of their car or whatever they can to inflict mass casualties.

Maybe the thing we really have the ability to do, even if we can't fix it totally, is to seek out a tiny shred of additional human connection with our fellow Americans near us. Our impact on each other is incredible and significant. Each of us has (for better or for worse) the ability to influence the lives of the people we come in contact with. So we can connect and engage with each other. We can introduce ourselves to our neighbors. We can call an old friend. We can talk to the people on the sidelines at our kids’ soccer games instead of scrolling through Facebook. We can volunteer to do something in our community which we enjoy – even offering to help elderly neighbors (or any neighbors!) with cleaning out their gutter since we have already taken our ladder out of the garage. We can smile at the person in line at the post office with us, and maybe introduce ourselves and start a conversation with them. We can all smile and say hello, and see where that connection can take us. Maybe nowhere, but at least we’re interacting with other humans at the most basic level of life. We are all in this together and at the end of the day, none of us are getting out alive.

I love America, it is a great nation which is full of GOOD PEOPLE. There are literally hundreds of millions of wonderful individuals living here doing so many good and kind and helpful things, building and maintaining an excellent way of life for each other – providing reliable electricity, access to clean water, an abundant food supply, a network of highways, easy access to medical care, law enforcement and emergency services, churches, schools, colleges, businesses, and so much more. I am heartbroken that yet again, another violent tragedy has unfolded upon us. I am so sorry for the victims, their family and friends. A suffocating darkness covered all of us on Sunday morning. But we are each small glimmers of light that can pierce that oppressive cloak and ultimately obliterate it. Comedian John Oliver acknowledged the terrorist’s failed attempt to crush the American spirit on air, and while doing so he said “I will happily embrace a Latin night at a gay club at the theme park capital of the world as the ultimate symbol about what is truly wonderful about America.” I agree, and I smile at that spear of sunshine he offered to all of us.

There is so much light coming from this tragedy. As Americans who never want to see such violence again, let’s be proactive with that light. Let’s resume actually engaging with our neighbors, our church and school communities, our coworkers, all the other humans we come into contact with each day. We can all start with a smile and a “Hello, how are you today?” As we strengthen our connection to each other we can positively and significantly impact the lives of those around us. This was a terrible, brutal Monday and we are all broken in some way because of Sunday’s tragedy, but let us take that love and light we are all sharing and KEEP SHARING it. Let’s connect with each other in spite of our differences  - and little by little it may work to prevent something like the Orlando Pulse massacre from ever happening again. Where we go one, we go all, so let’s all walk toward the light.