Dear Everyone Needing to Hear a Little Comfort,
I had to have a talk with a couple of my students last night who were taking the Boston Bombing really hard. I don't want to de-emphasize what happened, nor do I want to tell people that we shouldn't be upset. Because we should be upset, and it should affect us.
My close friend and I went to high school at the same time, in two very different places, yet we were affected by many of the same things. This latest event of terror made me start thinking back...
We had Channel 1 in junior high and high school. That was our link to the outside world. It was 20 minutes of news broadcast straight to the schools. We did not have facebook, yahoo, google, twitter, or....readily accessible internet. The internet was still "launching". Any other sources of news that we got were when we got home to watch the 5 o'clock news, or from the newspaper. I know this sounds a little old school, but, hey. We lived through events like the Oklahoma City Bombing, the first World Trade Center Bombing, Waco Texas, the Olympic village bombing, not to mention the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania by Al-Qaeda. We even had a racial riot at one of our football games while I sat in the band watching the game. They started threatening us with metal detectors at every entrance to every school in town and across the nation. These were just the events of junior high and high school, this doesn't even take into account the little I remember of elementary school which included the fall of the Berlin wall and the first Desert Storm.
In college, we watched the Columbine massacre unfold as we counseled fellow students from that area. I watched in horror as the towers fell on live TV, wondering if we were all going to be drafted into World War 3. I sat back as a young adult and watched our country head off on a mission to eliminate terrorism, a war that began pulling us apart as individuals and as a country.
Now, as a teacher, I have watched my students deal with the Virginia Tech shooting, Sandyhook, the movie theatre massacre, and now the bombing in Boston. We are still fighting a war on terrorism overseas, and now, I've watched as my little brother has served two tours in Iraq to help defend my freedom.
These events have always been a part of our world (unfortunately), but they are not new, and they are not necessarily increasing in frequency (although some may argue with me). The only difference has become our access to instant media. The internet has brought these stories to the front page of everyone's computers, phones, ipods, ipads, and other digital devices every time they log on to the internet. We no longer have to open a newspaper or wait for the 5 o'clock news to know what's been happening.
There are terrible things that happen in this world every day. Some of these things hit really close to home, and some of them remain in the distance, but they are always there. Do not fear the world. When you let fear take hold, the terrorist win. Instead, we mourn for the losses; we offer help and assistance where we can; we pray. Most importantly, we stand up and let others know that we will not back down, nor will we cave in because we have been pushed around.
These events shake us to the very core and make us begin to doubt ourselves, just like the bully on the playground makes us rethink every interaction. There is no difference between bullying and terrorism. If we allow these events to interrupt our lives for more than a grieving period, than we have allowed them to alter us, and that is not ok. To honor those that are lost, we have to remain true to ourselves and to each other, and we have to hold firm to our country and our identities.
This is just the heart of a small town dance teacher who is watching her beloved students deal with the same heartaches that she has had to deal with over the course of her own life. You are more than welcome to disagree with me, but I will monitor any inappropriate comments for the sake of my students. I hope you all understand that this is just my way of dealing with what is happening.
Thanks,
Summer
