I recently watched a video in which a YouTuber discussed her
confusion over what she should feel about the Boston bombings. (Link
here. Warning—it
contains foul language.) Like many of us, despite a lack of connections
to Boston and to marathoners, she felt empathy and a bit of survivor’s guilt—mixed
with self-reproach for feeling happy when she was ignorant of the tragedy and
for not feeling worse when she found out. She concluded by asking her
viewers what they thought people should feel in such times.
This YouTuber’s thoughts echoed ones I’ve had many times, and she’s
motivated me to articulate my own perspective:
In a world in which tragedy strikes multiple times a day with or
without our knowledge—whether theft, abuse, disease, rape, murder, bombing,
natural disaster, or something else—no
benefit comes from draining our energy in grief or anger for each with the same
intensity and constancy as if each had personally affected us.
That sounds callous, perhaps; an ideal world would never see
tragedies, but if it did, surely everyone would empathize completely and rally
to support each victim. That’s not feasible in reality; there are more
tragedies than we can know about or feel for or assist with, and not everyone
wants help or wants to live selflessly or wants to respect people’s rights to
life, liberty, and happiness.
Even without a storm of emotions and without being in a position
to help every victim we hear of, we should always recognize tragedies as
such and work to prevent them when we can. Never should we accept them as
normal, acceptable, everyday occurrences… and neither should we remain
perpetually upset about the state of the world; it will never be perfect until
we have “a new heaven and new earth” (Rev. 21:1-8).
Whether we feel emotions such as anger or grief over a tragedy
should be a natural response: if the feelings come, fine (within limits; emotion
should be tempered with reason); if they don’t, that’s also fine. A sense
that we should feel depressed or outraged, and an attempt to force or
sustain negative feelings instead of seeking healing and perspective—that’s
useless and even dangerous. Emotion alone doesn’t help victims nor make
us better people; forced emotion—or excessive and misplaced emotion—actually achieves
quite the reverse. It can trap us in cynicism, bitterness, or
debilitating depression, preventing us from functioning in life, from working
to improve the lives of those we can affect, from appreciating
humanity’s virtues, and from seeing how God is using the tragedy to
save and strengthen souls.
Therefore, instead of useless and excessive fury or grief,
tragedies should motivate us toward positive actions. Prayer should always be our first response. Next, as we’re led or as our respective
situations allow, we might volunteer after a catastrophe or send aid. Tragedies should also increase our vigilance
against similar trouble in our own areas, encourage us to support our neighbors
and mentor troubled kids—and to evangelize, given the reminder that this short
life is the only time people have to make a decision that will affect their eternal
home. Finally, tragedy should also motivate us to
reevaluate and improve our own worldview, priorities, faith, and behaviors.
This leads me to another thought—how informed should we stay about
tragedies? What can knowing about very distant tragedies really do for us
but depress us? Well, national and world news have value since we may
know people from the reported area, it gives us
specific subjects to pray about, and it informs us in case we feel led to send aid—if
only a letter of encouragement. I’ll
note, however, that the media tends to latch onto certain big cases like the
marathon bombings and to repeat the same details numerous times for viewers or
readers who learn about it late. By
contrast, they barely mention other daily tragedies that viewers are in a
better position to alleviate: for instance, it latched onto the Ariel
Castro case, but pays little
attention to the daily human
trafficking all across the U.S.. Thus, I’ve concluded that for myself, it’s good to know the highlights but
to not obsess over the news and over matters outside my control; I give them to
God in prayer and live where and when I am—and I try not to feel guilty over my
inability to play Superwoman.
