It’s terrifying that just a few months after writing about the shootings in Aurora that I find myself compelled to write about the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. Over the past few days its all been said. This is what needs to happen so this doesn’t happen again:
- More gun control
- Less gun control
- God in schools
- Police in schools
- More funding for mental health
- Leadership from Washington
All of these arguments can be made and disagreed upon passionately and we are still really nowhere closer to resolving this issue. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have these conversations, however, for most of us the impact of these conversations is very minimal. So we need to look at how we can make an impact- starting with ourselves, the one thing we actually have some control over.
We’re All Connected
Spiritual traditions of all kinds point to this truth- the interconnection of all things. There’s nothing like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary to really make that point felt and heard loud and clear. We have all been affected by this. We’ve all wept, we’ve all raged, and we’ve all looked for the reason this happened. But have we looked inward? Or are we all focused on blaming others?
Looking Inward
If I want to not condone violence, I have to start with myself and my own violent behavior. I have to take a long, hard look at the times when I myself did not behave in a compassionate way. I have to address my own self-aggression as well as the aggression I project on to others.
But I’m Not Violent
Perhaps not in a physical way, however, most of us have unresolved aggression towards ourselves and towards others. Any time you find yourself blaming someone else for how you feel, you are in fact engaging in aggression. Marshall Rosenberg says, “All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.”
My guess is Adam Lanza’s killing spree was indeed meant to punish someone for his pain- to get the world to hear that his suffering was unbearable. We are all being punished so to speak by having to live with the aftermath of this tragedy, unless we choose a different perspective.
Starting With Myself
I recently went to visit a close friend and felt uncomfortable with the level of conflict that existed between her and her husband, as well as the way they were fighting in front of me and my son. Instead of taking responsibility for that however, I blamed them. They were unskillful. They needed to work on their relationship. I wanted them to change their behavior so I wouldn’t have to feel what I was feeling- discomfort, anxiety, tension, and even a little fear. A more skillful approach would have been to talk to them both directly about how I was feeling, to take responsibility for my own experience, and to explain how I was going to take care of myself by staying somewhere else. I convinced myself I was being polite by not saying anything. But actually, I let my blaming thoughts convince me that they were responsible for my feelings, and this created pain and tension in my friendship. This was an act of both self aggression (not wanting to feel my own pain, judging it as “impolite,”) and outward aggression (blaming them).
Taking Inventory
In the wake of this tragedy, we are all being asked to step up to the plate and look at ourselves. We need to quit judging others and to focus on our own healing process. Whenever we find ourselves blaming someone else, this is a sign pointing to our need to look at what we cannot accept in ourselves. Whenever we find ourselves thinking self-aggressive thoughts, this is also a sign that we are inflicting violence on ourselves. The antidote to this is compassion; first for ourselves, then for others.
This Is How Healing Begins
The less violent I am in the world, the less violence there is in the world. We never fully know the impact of our compassionate actions or our ability to stop our own self-aggression because it spills over on to every interaction we have, creating a ripple effect of non-violence. For now, our hearts break for all of those impacted by the violence at Sandy Hook Elementary, and we have to take responsibility for that so as not to create more violence in thew world.