In a discussion of grief and loss with a group of nuns one sister contributed the question “To what life do our many losses call us? Sisters are well versed on loss. They recognize death is inevitable and funerals become more frequent as one grows older. In fact, I’m attending two this week. Yet, throughout this process, as fellow human beings, we are given the gift of compassion. It is the natural order that compassion, which means to “suffer with,” sustains us as we care for the sick, minister to the dying, and comfort those that mourn.
But after this past weekend’s news cycle of death and destruction in our country, which follows on the heels of repeated experiences of mass shootings and hate inspired deaths by gun violence, I’m convinced we have become a nation of traumatized people in the midst of an epidemic of “compassion fatigue.”
Our local newspaper is reducing the number of days a week that they will be
delivering a print edition. People of my generation will have to forfeit our morning ritual of accompanying our first cup of morning brew with a handheld physical page of newsprint. We’ve been told the change is necessary due to financial considerations but I’m convinced, the truth no one is telling is that there’s no way the print media can keep up with the rapidly unfolding tragedies sparked by gun violence, and the rapid ripples of responses they provoke.
We are repeatedly traumatized and re-traumatized by the number of towns and malls, outdoor festivals and places of worship, schools, restaurants and bars, as they become venues for mass tragedy. We struggle to comprehend that hundreds, now thousands of lives are being snuffed out or seriously changed forever in mere seconds or minutes. We want to hide, or at least get some respite from the constant bombardment to our sense of security, to protect our children and grandchildren from this ‘war is hell’ environment that has become our national reality.
To what life do these losses call us? Many individuals who have been personally impacted by mass shootings, parents at Newtown, students at Stoneman-Douglas, Mothers Demand Action, have been using the energy of their pain and it’s accompanying compassion, acting to prevent other families and communities from experiencing the same devastating traumatic pain. Their fight has come down to securing common sense laws to restrict the sale of rapid-fire weapons of war and to put in place background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
Now, in spite of the large number of people, (including gun owners) who support these efforts, bills to address these issues are, even at this moment having trouble getting enough votes in our congress and state houses to pass. A believer in the truth that ‘evil persists because the good do nothing’ I click on all the appeals to take action, forward messages to my Facebook page, call my elected political representatives, and contribute money to the organizations spearheading this fight. I overcome my own compassion fatigue by remembering the face and voice of the Stoneman-Douglas high school student who soon after that shooting, looked directly into the camera and said, “DO SOMETHING! We’re KIDS. DO SOMETHING!”
Would love to know what you are doing in regard to this situation and please let me know if you come across another way that I can help.
Sheila
