Never forget.
Always remember.
I had to start wearing my headphones in physical therapy recently, because they play non-stop “news” in there. Just hearing it is stressful. I can’t do anything to stop murders and kidnappings. I’m powerless over the painful stories but it still makes me anxious. And I’m not just talking 9/11, obviously. So I tune it and everyone around me out.
Whatever it is you believe about governments and inside jobs, the real conspiracy I’m faced with twice a week on these little excursions into alleged healing, is that they’re playing this televised emotional circle jerk continuously – making it impossible for me to relax. I’m so dumb that it took me this long to realize they probably do that on purpose. The news is tension inducing. If you hear it while you’re trying to stretch, your body won’t relax. If your body won’t relax, it doesn’t heal. If you don’t heal, you have to keep coming back – where you’ll hear more news and continue to not heal while business booms for them.
So I boom music into my headphones while I’m doing stretches I already know.
And remove them to learn new stretches that’ll help me in the future.
And put ’em back in to block out healing-hindrance once I know them.
Similarly, I feel like this exhuming of the past each year and reiterating it can be (not “is” – bear with me hear – but can be) detrimental to healing when people react to it from a place of fear and powerlessness. I see arguments arise on Facebook about conspiracies and the news over-shares this horrible footage. The towers toppling. The Godzilla-sized plume rising up from it like a behemoth Phoenix from the ashes before blanketing the skies. The cries of terror that make your heart skip a beat until you finally become desensitized to the sound because it plays over and over and-….
There comes a point where reverence and remembrance crosses the line into emotional pornography, and that’s solely accomplished through the media’s portrayal of it. Once we see through that – the endless loops that make us feel scared, sad, and angry, the unnatural cadence of the anchor’s voice, the general tone of panic in which every story but the dog-show gets delivered – then we don’t have to give into it. We can pay our respects and move forward. Not move on, but move forward to work on that which we aren’t powerless over – the shaping of the future and solutions to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Maybe asking ourselves questions like – if we or our allies give money to countries and those countries use it to arm current terrorists, is that helping or hurting our common goal? Which is to not have a tragedy like this happen again? But maybe that’s a bit far removed. Maybe you’re not involved in politics.
Neither am I, for all my armchair directing.
But what about your kids seeing this for the first time?
Are your goals for them close enough to take an active part in?
Russell Brand brought a facepalm-worthy “ISIS” coloring book (that’s somehow been published) onto his brilliant Youtube show. As he flipped through the pages, he shared just how deranged some people are in trying to explain terrorism to our children. Pictures of crucified dudes, a line up of terrorist mug shots (drawn to look pretty much like any other Middle Eastern dude), and even Osama using his bottom bish as a human shield – were just some of the fun pictures provided. The opposing argument was “Well how do we explain it to them?” and his response was “Don’t!”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, Chip…”
I agree with avoiding the darker aspects. But as I started to see all these things on Facebook about it inevitably getting brought up in school, I thought – well – maybe we can cover it at its simplest level? So that they don’t learn things that aren’t true? The problem with these morbid coloring books (an example of what not to do, if you haven’t seen them yet) is that, if I’m five (and some would say I still am), I’m not going to “get” the concepts being written about in that book. But those images of dudes on crucifixes will remind me of religion – and that will confuse me.
Also, the pictures of the bad guys will look like a whole lotta nice normal dudes walking down the street who happen to practice Islam the loving way it was meant to be practiced, but I won’t know that ’cause I’m five.
So that might confuse me also.
They might even look like my doctor.
And that’ll really confuse me – especially when you tell me to trust them.
So, that’s why those sorts of tools – I agree – and anything similar are terrible. As kids, we learn from our parents what they say and do – but mostly from what we see and what they show us. So, instead of propagating separatist ideals (which is the root, underlying reason we got massacred a year ago anyway, isn’t it? Someone sees my people as being different from theirs?), why not take advantage of the chance to teach a good lesson – like – we’re all essentially the same? As a college friend unexpectedly dealt with her three year old trying to make sense of 9/11, she asked Facebook friends for help. I’m not a parent, so I can’t begin to know what an ordeal that must be. But I am still kind of a kid at heart. And I know that my inner kid likes things that it can make sense of, so I asked this:
Her: “C and I were scrolling through FB together and she wanted to watch this video Kathy shared. I let her, without knowing the impact on her or myself. “Why is she closing her eyes? Did the building broke? Why did they steal the airplane?” I never thought I’d have to explain this event to my child so early. She’s 3…”
Me: I suck with kids, but would relating it to something she understands help? Maybe comparing terrorist acts to bullies (or the bad guy in cartoons) who do mean things to you because you do things differently than they do? Because it scares them that not everyone’s like them?
I’ve seen a lot of these kinds of posts.
I’m not a parent (purposely – ’cause I don’t wanna deal with this kinda thing).
But for those of you who are, maybe you can enlighten me:
If they’re old enough to ask about it, what age is too early to turn a bad past event into a good future outlook for your kids? You may not change the whole world, but terrorism comes in all forms. So, could we avoid the abstract ugly stuff for later (when they can comprehend it) and focus on the positive takeaway we want them to understand and apply to the world now? Just a non-dramatic, positively-delivered, over-breakfast educational bit like “Yes, darling lamb. This is why we have to treat people equally – so nobody feels left out, different, afraid, and grows up to be a bad guy or bully. Now finish your juice and do something kind for someone at school today!”
Or should we just keep in our headphones like I do at P.T.?
And ignore one solution we’re actually not powerless over?