a rather long comment on tragedy

Tragedy can be defined in many different ways. The death of thousands of people can be tragic just as the death of a beloved pet can be tragic. The degrees of the tragedy, of course, are quite different. I find the ways in which people react to these tragedies very interesting, namely those involving large amounts of people. Two examples would be the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01, and the more recent killings at Virginia Tech.

I was in the sixth grade when the World Trade Centers were attacked, and remember being astonished by the way in which the United States reacted to the tragedy, having never witnessed anything like it before. Every news channel and media outlet was consumed by the event. The tragedy understandably took precedence over all other news. I became addicted to it in a way. After watching the second tower fall on live television, I remember watching them fall on the news over and over again for the next few weeks. In situations like this, the nation could not get enough information. It didn’t matter if we were hearing the same things every day; we were obsessed with trying to understand what had happened. The same thing has occurred in the week following the mass killings at Virginia Tech. The media has been completely absorbed by it, and Americans cannot get enough of it. Perhaps we, as a society, think that knowing exactly what happened will lead us to a better understanding of the event, and help us to cope with the feelings of sadness, grief, or anxiety that it has created.

It is interesting how tragedies such as these affect individuals as well as groups or societies who are not directly connected to them. It seems that after a tragedy occurs many people begin to look for ways to connect themselves to it, however many the degrees of separation may be. After September 11th, everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who was there when it happened. After the killings at Virginia Tech, I found out that the same creative writing teachers who had taught the murderer had taught my creative writing teacher. In this way, we feel the need to connect ourselves to the tragedy in order to justify our own grief.

It is an easy observation that people tend to come together in the face of tragedy. There was a surge of patriotism that occurred following September 11th as Americans came together to support those who had been directly affected, and to rally against terrorism. In much the same way, the US—the collegiate community especially—has come together to support Virginia Tech. This fierce and spontaneous unity can be viewed as positive, but it can also have negative affects. Bowen’s Theory of Family Systems, which can easily be applied to society as a whole, illustrates this negative aspect. When there is heightened tension in groups that have grown extremely close, anxiety can escalate quickly as it spreads throughout the group. As anxiety goes up, the closeness of the group can become more stressful than comforting. In the case of September 11th, for example, Americans became so connected as a society that anyone who was different, disagreed with the president, or criticized the country in any way risked being ostracized or accused of supporting terrorism. Groups become so wrapped up in unifying in order to cope with grief that they forget other values that were once important, like individuality and rational thinking.

I think that every generation feels like the state of the world gets worse as they grow older, when really they are just becoming more aware of the world in which they live. As a child, I hardly knew of any tragedies that occurred, but as a young adult I am very much aware. Perhaps this is a bit of psychological protection, that as children we tend to be far removed from events that do not directly affect us. As adults, we experience these events with real awareness, and we are able to come together in order to cope with the pain and confusion that tragedy brings.

Luck. Some people believe in it, some are decidedly against it. Some view it as simply superstition, others think it's another way of looking at probability. It seems that luck always comes up when we're lacking it the most. Everyone's always searching for luck, wishing each other good luck, saying "Oh, you're so lucky!" when something goes right for someone else. And, when searching for luck, there are always those handy Lucky Charms (they also come in less edible forms).

Theatrical types are the most luck-obsessed batch of people you'll probably ever meet. Among many, many other superstitions, it's bad luck to wish someone good luck, so they say "break a leg" instead. Shakespeare's Macbeth is considered one of the unluckiest plays ever written, so to mention "that play" inside a theater is one of the gravest of sins. Whistling is also considered unlucky, as well as using real money or peacock feathers onstage.

What perplexes me most is the way luck works exactly. I mean, once you've had a streak of bad luck, how do you find good luck again? How do you regain it once it's lost? We'll use my Spring Break for an example. I went on a trip with a group from my school, and everything that could have possibly gone wrong did: we were stranded in Chicago for two days with no luggage, stranded in London's Heathrow airport for fifteen hours straight, a terrible crime was committed in our hotel while we were staying there, and those are just the big things. I doubt a single group of people have ever been quite so unlucky. And wherever we went the bad luck followed--we were standing somewhere to take a picture, and a woman fell down the stairs behind us. A little girl dropped her toy and it broke, a french tourist fainted. It was like a black cloud was hanging over us.

I guess it really depends on what you believe in. Maybe someone had done something really unlucky before we left for the trip. Maybe we were fated to have this horrible experience so that we would learn something about life. Maybe we were being followed by demons. Or maybe bad things just tend to happen in clusters.

Whatever it was, I plan on getting my hands on one of these before I go on another trip. Just in case.

Chocolate bunnies...Chocolate Jesus...

Easter is such a strange holiday. As with most Christian holidays, it has become commercialized to the point that you don't actually have to understand the religious aspect to celebrate it.

Christmas is so much more friendly though: a baby is born and a nice obese man comes and gives you stuff. With Easter, however, comes a giant bunny of some sort who leaves you candy inside those little plastic eggs, and the baby that was born in December gets killed and then comes back to life. No wonder kids get confused.

Of course, most of this is completely lost in the hunt to find that huge golden Easter egg with all the special candy in it before everyone else. And I guess this is a good thing. If you're going to sit a kid down and tell them this gory story about the Messiah being brutally beaten and killed and then coming to life again, you may as well get them all sugared up first.

As usual, all of this is actually leading up to something. Bare with me.

You would think that churches would be a lot more concerned about this. I mean, bunnies carrying around eggs and leaving them in baskets for children? Ancient pagan fertility symbols, anyone? But they seem to be the first ones to organize the Easter egg hunts. I've seen my share of kids standing next to some preacher dressed in a bunny suit, wailing in fear as their picture is taken.

No, instead of worrying about this, the Catholic Church is much more worried about this. This sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro entitled "My Sweet Lord" is an anatomically correct representation of Jesus Christ made out of over 200 pounds of milk chocolate. The gallery that was supposed to display the sculpture received so many calls and e-mails and even death threats from furious Catholics that they were forced to cancel the exhibit. What's funny about all of this is that they were offended not by the fact that Jesus was made out of chocolate, but that he was not depicted wearing a loincloth.

So...you can make the Son of Man into a confectionery marvel, just be sure he's covered up. And the Easter egg hunt is scheduled for next Saturday.