New Eyes

A recent event on my university campus has really gotten me to thinking about the world today and things such as the media. I realize there are bad people out in the world. I hear about them on the news, read about them in the papers, watch them portrayed in movies, and other sources of media. I watch NCIS occasionally where the main characters investigate the deaths of marines, often murdered in brutal ways.

But this event has me looking at all this in a new way. Saturday night, a student was shot on campus. He was rushed to the ER, but they were unable to save him. I did not know him personally, but it hurts and scares me all the same. I can only imagine what his family and friends must be going through and my heart goes out to them. Nothing like this has ever happened on our campus, so it is a tragedy for us all.

Never has the violence been so close to me. I have always viewed it from far away through the eyes of others in the various forms of media. It's different now. I feel like the media has almost dulled the seriousness and pain of such tragic events; in particular movies and television shows. We are constantly surrounded by death and pain through the lens of a camera. We flippantly play video games where we gun down our enemies, or like Grand Theft Auto and other such games, we become the villains and take on the "good guys". I was watching Captain America with Llama and his roommate and, despite the fact the Hydra were bad, I caught myself thinking one time when the Americans blew up a Hydra tank, "But there were people in there". How often do we sit back and think about the other side? How often do we consider the extras in a movie that are just there to die? How often does the movie focus only on the hero saving the world and not the mass destruction itself? We see the hero(es) fighting the evil force and maybe taking it down, but how often do we see the tragic recovery of the city? Like the second Jurassic Park. The T-Rex wreaks chaos havoc in the city it was transported to and we see it shipped off once they catch it. We see the victory, but not the bitter ruins of the city and lives it left behind.

I may be taking this a little too seriously with movies and television shows, but right now I can't help it. Media has given me the mental images of people who are shot and I keep seeing this poor student bleeding and dying in a residence hall. They tried to save him at the hospital, but could not. He died. I just need to express my humanity to others; that I consider people to be people no matter how bad they are or what side they are on. When a person is killed, it is another human life stolen. Sometimes it just doesn't feel like the world wants to look at us all as people. It feels like we separate ourselves by where you live, what you believe, and what has divided us in the past.

This tragedy has me looking at the world through new eyes.

"Don't give up! I believe in you all.
A person's a person, no matter how small!
And you very small persons will not have to die
If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!"
-Dr. Seuss