What We Are Capable Of

Today at the bookstore a customer told me about this. This is fucked up.

I didn't, at first, want to mention it. I wanted to spend my evening organizing and aphabetizing my CDs. So I did. I also hardwired my speakers and made signs for the bookstore. I listened to some really old Beck, and Sparklehorse, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Van Morrison. I rearranged my furniture.

I did not write, and I've finally revisited my habit of writing something daily. I did not read, and my habit (always!) is to read at least one short story per evening. This, even though I've purchased a bean bag chair so comfortable that I can write in it for hours at a time.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to get up in the morning. No, that's a lie, because I rarely wonder this. But just today, after hearing the story, I wondered it.

Here's What I Need To Keep In Mind

Stuff like this is an anomaly. We hear about one awful thing, and we remember it forever, and we trust the world less than we did before, and it shows in the way we treat one another. But think about how many, many times we've run across the street and the approaching driver has hit the brakes. If the driver is angry at us, it's because we have done something that endangers our own bodies, and no driver wants a piece of that. Drivers and pedestrians alike find the notion of an injured human extremely distasteful.

Here's My Secret and Paranoid Fear, Though

We in the United States have reached our capacity to cope with the awful things that are happening all over the world while we pretend that nothing is wrong.

Conclusion

In the face of everything, we should continue to be civil to one another, to try (often) to treat others as we would be treated if we were given their fate and not ours, and to strive with every fiber to remember those times we have felt love for another human being. I mean, to remember them vividly. Then we must remind ourselves that we are capable of this, too.