Two Thoughts About the OBL Discussions of Yesterday

[OneGrassRoot]

This is for those who were concerned about displays of "blood lust" and jubilant celebration over the death of another -- even the death of a heinous criminal as OBL.

First, a Facebook friend had an EXCELLENT point. Perhaps what some are interpreting as "grave dancing" was simply the celebration of triumph over someone who caused so much pain and suffering to so many. The same celebration would have occurred with CAPTURE of OBL. If you felt jubilant and celebratory but perhaps had a twinge of discomfort about celebrating someone's death, seeing it from that lens may be helpful. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Of course, if you felt jubilant and had NO hesitation or feelings of being uncomfortable about it, I'm not judging that. :)

Which brings me to the second point.

Another brilliant FB friend also shared an excellent point. I wrote frequently yesterday -- here, there and everywhere -- that people were having many different reactions to the death of OBL. Not only do we not necessarily know what others were thinking or why they reacted as they did, I personally don't think many people understood it themselves. They really hadn't processed what it meant (plus, we Americans aren't the most self-reflective bunch on the planet as a whole). 9/11 affected all of us differently -- some very directly, others more indirectly -- but it did impact everyone in some way.

What was pointed out is that the myriad emotions -- and the evolution of emotions as the day went on -- is very reminiscent of 9/11 itself. If you can think back to how you felt on 9/12, there were a lot of emotions that evolved over time. How we reacted was very individual, based on very individual factors.

Same with this event.

So many people I care about deeply were very, very disturbed by how others reacted yesterday. Whether or not my sharing these two observations is comforting or not, I wanted to offer it for consideration. I just don't think there was as much overt, authentic "blood lust" as many feel there was, even if people were aggressively owning it as such.

There was a lot of raw emotion being displayed that needed to be processed -- and a lot of push-back to judgments about those emotions. I personally had no trouble stepping back, allowing it for what it was, without being overly concerned about it.

Had people started ransacking and setting fire to things, or attacking Muslims, for example, as an odd "victory" response, that would have been another matter altogether.

As always, it is my greatest hope that we can heal differences and find common ground in order unite with common a intent -- to create more compassionate, loving communities, to ease suffering, and to inject more joy into this human experience.

This was such a big event for Americans that it has the potential to be healing in many ways, so I offer this for your consideration in the hopes that we can move forward more gracefully. We always have so much "us" versus "them" scenarios going on, even within our community here. I think that harms more than it helps.

Just my personal observations and opinions, for what they're worth.....

:hi:

:grouphug: