Division of Feeling and Opinion

Good morning on this Wednesday just before school begins in our little town. The boys or young men, whichever you consider them, are out practicing for football both early and late this week. I don't remember football practice as being much fun, but I also don't remember doing as much as this team across the campus is doing each day this week. They work quite late into the evening. Alright, so Robin Williams chose to end his life the other day. The opinions I have seen differ on whether suicide is a selfish act or not. Some believe that it is because it leaves "me" to deal with it each day. Yes, that was a me in there, and they typically say it without a trace of awareness of what they just spoke or wrote. Selfish or not may not be the question we should look at.

After the act is done, suicide, homicide, or genocide, we the survivors both near and distant are left to sort out the feelings. Some feelings are considered proper, others gross, and some leave us wondering. Those at a distance may be a bit ashamed of the lack of feeling or coldness that they feel. Perhaps not realizing that such is a defensive reaction to all the stories of death available to us in the media these days. If we felt profound grief for each death we can read about each day, our grief would indeed be never ending. Those nearby in the relationship may wonder if the grief will end too soon or not soon enough. Some of us may run into what is called survivor's guilt. Why we feel this is open to speculation, but it does happen. (Typically there is no danger of that with a celebrity given that we only know the person through the roles they played or the public face they presented to us.)

In every death, we have this division of feeling and opinion on what is right or wrong, proper or gross, questionable or rock-solid-facts-that-other-fellow-is-an-idiot. Social media gives the last one opportunity to ventilate their opinions as never before. Often you can find opposite sides of it in the same discussion. What matters I suppose is that no matter what caused the person to depart from us, we are left here to obey one important command from our Lord: Love one another.

Bucky