When I wrote my last blog post, I was angry. I wrote the following: “Generally there is a tendency to elevate humans as a superior species. I have described in earlier blogs that the only thing that separates the human beings as a species from all other species on the earth, is our capacity to think and hence reason and thus make any of our actions a matter of choice. Thus all our actions can be based on rationale. They need not be a matter of instinct or reflex. This is indeed true. But, today in the aftermath of horror in Newtown, CT., USA, I have learned, even this is a simple and somewhat glorified view of the human species.” https://sipractce.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/in-the-aftermath-of-a-heinous-crime/
Then came the moving stories of valor and compassion by so many. The church services and the somber events to show respect to the fallen, followed. The public outcry reverberated everywhere at the madness perpetuated by one man, who had grown up under circumstances nearly impossible to cope with by a single mother. The collective madness of the society on its excessive reliance on guns as the solution to all our problems of security is slowly unfolding. There is a desire to seek butter and a hug as the answer to the guns and bullets. But, none of these could calm my sense of anger and bitterness. Then I watched the two video clips:
What I saw and heard in these video clips returned a sense of sanity and re-assurance in my thinking. In one of these videos, George, husband of the slain principal Dawn Hochsprung, describes the valiant effort by Dawn, who confronted the gun man. This heroic effort by Dawn while facing her own death, has saved two other teachers next to her. George has said, “I am not angry anymore, but I am very sad”!
If so many who are grieved so much can hold their own and look ahead, it requires all the rest of us to look up to them as our role models and repeat after George: “I am sad, but I am not angry anymore”.
Spirituality In Practice 