Trying to Make Sense of Mass Shootings

I’m trying to figure out Las Vegas. Trying to make sense of mass shootings.

In the wake of this devastating shooting, I’ve been watching crazy (and crazy-making) amounts of news. And thinking about how my brain works. When something as horrific as this happens, I see that I go straight to trying to make sense of the incomprehensible (in this case, mass shootings). I’m looking for some explanation, trying to draw some conclusion.

This particular event is ripe with things I can latch onto in a quest for understanding (as if such a thing were possible). I can lock onto mental health care problems, or gun control issues, or political failings, or the moral aimlessness of the world in general…the list goes on. There are plenty of these avenues to try in attempting to assuage my sadness and fear.

But none of what my brain was doing was helping. With the presence of evil in the world so much on display, there’s plenty to make and keep me scared, infuriated and distressed. I have a range of options for feeling powerless, guilty, angry and hopeless. It’s not a good place to be in. I’m stuck.

After watching way too much TV coverage of the mass shootings in Las Vegas, however, I realized I knew what I had to do to get unstuck. As I’d learned from my daughter Emily, when the going gets tough, the tough drop into Heart. As I felt my overwhelm build, I realized I needed to be guided less by brain and more by Heart if I wanted to not be destroyed just by witnessing this event from afar.

So, I looked again with new eyes. I looked with Heart.

And though nothing could change the fact of this evil act, suddenly I could see something else where before there’d been just a big black hole of sorrow. I could see that even when the situation was as dark as possible, love showed up. People helped each other. Courage and heroism were on full display. So was empathy, from near and far.

People were taking action, giving blood, donating money, standing by friends and neighbors. No one was checking political party registration or assessing ability to pay or administering loyalty oaths. The inhumanity of the Las Vegas shooter, obviously unable to access Heart within himself, pushed millions of people into Heart.

If we can stay there, we’ll find the collective will to get through this tragedy, individually and together, finding strength, endurance, and persistence to move through one day at a time. Unstuck from the brain’s swamp of fear, we can bring others with us and take action toward a world where this is less likely to happen.

Heartfelt wishes,
Amy

Photo credit: Chicago Now