Lately I've been opening this blog with images of where we come from, but this afternoon I feel that wouldn't be appropriate.
My television is on in the background....I'm listening to the beginnings of the rescue attempt of the thirty odd miners in Chile. It has been a world wide effort...yes, it's a Chilean operation, but the reports are that govermental and technology communities from all over the world have offered tech help if not infrastructure. This effort is what we as a race can achieve as far as support and working together.
Contrast that with the story below***********
Ask 13 year old Hope Witsell about compassion... about kindness...
Oh, that's right we can't ask Hope.... She killed herself.
Please take a moment to read this article...{perhaps ignore the video}, the text below it is the story that will break your heart. What scares me is the direction technology is taking our young generation. Believe me, I understand that since the days of Plato the elders of every generation have decried where our collective children were headed but our our elders didn't have the technology available that todays kids have. All the technology in the world....and at 13 the emotional developement one gathers just 3 years after playing with dolls.
We can't blame Hope's mother... I believe her story that she had told her daughter about the dangers of inappropriate behaviour. Can we blame Hope? Can we blame the school for a perceived failure to let the parents know of Hope's emotional state? I don't know. Can we blame the parents of the children that bullied Hope? None of those will return a beautiful 13 year old child to our world... and while I have no answers, the future scares me. In my life time there have been terrible acts of violence.... literally tens of millions have died at the hands of people with no conscience...people that did things just because they could.
As many of you know I am a practising Buddhist... and there is a philosophy that says I will be reborn again and again until all those uncooked seeds in my lives have been lived through. This current incarnation has me sitting here anguishing over the death of a 13 year old....and a part of me can understand that perhaps that what that 13 year old was supposed to do in this life was to end her life at 13... no matter how terrible that may sound. A part of me can understand that perhaps my next life will be to be born blind and crippled in Varanasi India and beaten to death on those streets.
All of those beliefs don't stop my pain today... and I'm not wise enough to have answers this time around...
And so it goes
I love you all, brinda
Namaste
नमस्ते
I read the story of Hope Witsell a few days ago. It is really tragic. I've never really stopped to think before about it before, but with people being as connected as they are with smartphones and social networks we really can't seem to just turn off the world. When I was a child, the bullying stopped when I got off of the school bus. Back then they couldn't follow you into your home. But now they can, through the wonders of technology.
ReplyDeleteMakes me yearn for the times when things were so much simpler. My heart goes out to the family of this young woman. I wish I could understand people.