“People killin’, people dyin’
Children hurt and you hear them cryin’…
“Where is the love?”
I just finished a spate of pool tournaments with a team of people that I enjoy spending time with. The team is breaking up (for reasons that have nothing to do with chemistry) and as we said goodbye to each other, we noted how much we had enjoyed the association. And on the last day, I got in my car and berated everyone outside of my steel, all the way home. My mellow mood evaporated on the highway.
I have noted before that I am an intolerant and angry driver, one who is prone to road rage. In most other things I am passive and patient, so I don’t know where this car-nastiness comes from. I resolved (again) to be a kinder driver; I can do nothing about the driving skills of the knuckleheads who … sorry.
We, the people, have become so focused on pointing out the faults in others that we have forgotten how to just … be kind. Everything outside of our personal space is wrong, and everything done by anyone not ourselves, or of our own political or religious group or philosophy, is wrong. We are so busy clamoring for the heads of some other villagers that we minimize true tragedy, such as comparing an economic downturn to the rise of one of the most murderous regimes in human history: the Nazis of Germany. We cannot merely disagree; we must demonize to make our point. And hidden by the flames of our rages are the tortured faces of the lost and damaged in our world.
I have a friend who is a survivor of a spousal abuse; she finally escaped the relationship by running, clad in nightclothes, into the night and toward a homeless shelter. If I related to you her upbringing, family history, undergraduate college achievements and MBA, you would find it hard to imagine her as a likely candidate for domestic abuse. We have our stereotypes, and they are more important to us than the voices we hear, crying for help.
I read a story of a young couple, pregnant too soon, married too young, and dead. Despite multiple arrests for violence against his estranged wife, the angry man was released into society to move along the path of misery that led him to steal a gun and murder the woman he said he loved and then, commit suicide. The story was written without editorial comment, which is as it should be. But here is my editorial comment: the 14-year-old orphaned son left to live with his great-aunt is in trouble, because the members of both families believe that it was “nothing serious” when the man “got mad and … smacked her.” Someone needs to save that child before he is forever lost to decency.
Psychiatrists and psychologists say that children exposed to violent families are more likely to become violent themselves. I managed to find my way off that path, as did my sister and brothers. But we all must listen to the whimpers of the wounded and hush the roar of the perpetually angry. The quote at the top of this column is from a song by The Black-Eyed Peas, and while I do not contend that the song is capable of moving people to action (see: “Happy Birthday,” by Stevie Wonder, and “The Hurricane,” by Bob Dylan) it does ask a question that we should hear in our hearts: Where is the love? It is not in the smack on the face, nor in the quiet rages against innocent drivers.