Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏 from Pixabay
Wise people say you shouldn’t read/watch the news right before bed. Even wiser ones say not to read/watch it at all. The really important stuff will get through to you somehow and the rest of it is just depressing anyway.
I should probably follow that advice. Instead, however, I read an article today about a tragic accident that left a man dead. Mind you, there was no need for me to read this article. It didn’t happen to anyone I know; the incident was not even local. It was just a random piece of extraordinarily sad news that caught my attention and then left me essentially bereft of joy for the rest of the day.
What happened was one person mishandled a gun and another was shot and killed.The person who caused the accident will be tried for manslaughter and could end up in prison for up to ten years. Of course I don’t know all the details just from reading a few paragraphs but the narrative seems to indicate that there was no malice.
The person was arrested and the mug shot plastered all over the web. The shooter is a woman, about my age, so perhaps that’s why it resonates so much with me. Imagining going to prison for ten years (or even ten days) is nearly nauseating. If someone perpetrates a really violent and intentional crime and earns himself ten years at least we can say he deserved it. But if it’s an accident? Doesn’t that matter?
Besides dealing with the guilt from having killed someone however unintentionally, this woman has to face a strange possibility. She may have to suspend her life and go away to a place filled with unknown and in many cases violent people and crawl into a cage with them. And then stay there for ten years.
I can’t imagine staying in one place for ten years much less inside a few rooms within one place. Thoughts of such restrictions drain the potential and hope from life. What desolation and heaviness must be in her heart as she contemplates her future. For not only might she have to endure imprisonment, she must also accept the scorn of those who judge her. No small thing.
For I don’t know if it’s a new trend or if I’ve just not noticed it before, but people these days seem awfully quick to judge and condemn others for life if they make even the smallest and most innocent mistakes. Sure, a mistake that kills someone is not small, but her intentions were not evil. When things like this happen, doesn’t anyone realize that it could be any of us who finds himself in the hot seat? Or under the nearsighted judgment of others? The moral high ground does not host a permanent population. Surely people realize this?
Well, apparently, people don’t. According to David McRaney, author of You Are Now Less Dumb, we rarely see the same reality as others (here is a great summary of the book). When someone else makes a mistake or does something awful, many of us refuse to accept that we ourselves could ever do such a thing. Could I get annoyed enough that I tell someone to f*ck off? Or worse? Is it possible that I could forget to look behind me as I backed out the driveway and run over some kid on a bike? Might I cause an accident at work that costs someone his life?
The answer to all those questions is, unfortunately, yes. Bad things can happen to good people. Or maybe more accurately, good people sometimes do bad things. Either way, I hope it’s never me embroiled in some catastrophe like the woman in the article I read. Recognizing it could be me, however, seems important. Being informed, aware, and humble about my life should help me do what I’ve always hoped I would do: not only learn from my mistakes, but also from those of others.
In this particular case, I’m feeling like there is nothing to learn except don’t have a job that involves guns. Or anything else life or death. That was actually what guided me in choosing my major in college. I didn’t want to be a surgeon or engineer because what if I screwed up? I misplace things, forget to finish tasks, and make glaring mistakes all the time. It seemed like a no-brainer that I should inoculate myself against catastrophe by selecting a career that couldn’t result in death (for me or anyone else) if I happened to have a bad day.
But that is exactly the problem. Thinking I can protect myself. If I do this, then nothing bad will happen. Or This doesn’t apply to me. Those are lies I’m telling myself; that we all tell ourselves. Truth is, no matter how safe a job I choose or how careful I am, things can go wrong. So I think the only way to handle situations such as these are to simply let them be. I can’t prepare for, evade, or prevent every bad outcome; but I can hope for strength when one turns up. And commit to respecting those in trouble instead of judging them. As the old saying goes: there but for the grace of God go I.
I looked it up and found that saying is not reliably attributed to anyone. That doesn’t, however, diminish its wisdom or utility. Actually, it’s kind of cool to know that others have already experienced this very situation and summed it up rather nicely.
Those nine words address the pain and offer as much mercy as anything else I can imagine. Substitute “the universe” or “my higher power” or “karma” if God is not your thing.
It still works.