Some Things Just Can't Be Ignored

For the past week, we’ve been having some major plumbing issues (our main sewer line is clogged and keeps backing up - really nasty). So I’ve kind of been wrapped up in my own issues. I actually was going to write about plumbing and homeownership problems today. All that changed when I woke up and got on Facebook this morning.

And I read about Alton Sterling. Another incident of police brutality against a black man.

And that pulled me out of my own little world, and I could no longer ignore other things that I’ve been turning a blind eye to while scrolling down my newsfeed, like the suicide bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, killing 250 people.

And so I started off my day feeling depressed and completely unmotivated to do anything.

I know both of these issues are going to be either ignored or politicized. If the attack in Iraq had happened in, say… Paris, Brussels, or perhaps Orlando, we’d be changing our Facebook profile pictures and hashtagging our prayers. But Iraq? Silence. And as for the Alton Sterling case, if not ignored, it will be politicized, dismissed, or he will be blamed for his death. Why can’t we just mourn the loss of life? Is death too hard to look in the eye when it happens to people who aren’t like us? Are there too many other issues tangled up in it that we just don’t know how to handle it? Or do we really just not care?

All I know is that I’m so discouraged and fed up with it.

I know that events like these are depressing and hard to deal with. It’s so much easier to gloss over them whenever possible, because it’s so painful. All day, all I’ve wanted to do was stay off the internet and curl up with a book, pretending that the outside world didn’t exist. But the ability to ignore certain acts of violence is a privilege that so many have been denied, and I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve realized that when I write about something discouraging or frustrating that’s happening in my life, I usually try to end on a somewhat positive note. I try to share something I’m grateful for, or how I’m learning and growing through difficult circumstances. Today, I just don’t think I can. There is no positive note to end on. And honestly, with so many lives lost, maybe there just shouldn’t be a positive note. Maybe today is just a day to mourn.