WORK IN PROGRESS
(Life, Me, You, This Newsletter) Vol. V, Issue18, September 15, 2001

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TRAGEDIES

Tragedies change our lives. Need they change us, the
people we truly are?

So much has already been written about the September
11 tragedies that I hesitate to write more, for it feels as
though all has been said already. Yet I cannot ignore
them, either.

We are overwhelmed with tragedies. Tragedy of the
thousands of deaths, innocent people suddenly taken
from their loved ones, children destined to grow up
without the father, or the mother, or the sibling or other
family member or friend who might have made all the
difference in their lives. People who have lost those
closest to them, people who, almost worst pain of all, still
do not know...

Tragedy of symbols destroyed. Tragedy of life plans,
work plans, lost. Of years of hard work, time, effort,
dreams, tossed aside and ground into powder.

Tragedy of innocence lost, of people who lived in faith
and calm who will now live with suspicion and fear.

Tragedy of contagious anger. The frustration and pain
that most feel, but that, in some, is flowing over into
hateful thoughts, vicious messages and actions.
Suddenly the internet is more filled with anger and
hostility, both toward individuals and toward peoples as a
whole. Suddenly people who have lived relatively
peacefully fear to shop at their local grocery store.
Suddenly the terrorists are winning by undermining not
brick and concrete, but how we are to each other.

We may assume that the terrorists had many goals,
including shock, pain, death, destruction. There is much
about which most of us can do little or nothing, except
pray, contribute where we can, offer a shoulder where it
is needed. But about the anger and hate... there we
CAN do something. We can refuse to hate. We can
deal with our anger. We can come together in caring,
rather than rant apart in rage. If you would deny the
terrorists their ultimate goal, which may go far beyond
the destruction of steel and concrete and flesh and bone,
then refuse to hate. Refuse to let them change, in a
negative direction, the way you respond to your fellow
humans.

Have you ever been condemned by association?
Assumed to be a certain way because of the company
you kept, the clothes you wore, the friends you had?
Ever been stereotyped, responded to in a certain way by
people who did not know you at all? Simply because of
how you looked, or where you or your ancestors were
born? I have, and I know how deeply it wounds, by its
very unfairness, and the feeling of helplessness that it
engenders.

Even on the day of the tragedy, the mayor of the
community in which I live found it necessary to plead for
tolerance because the Islamic members of that
community were already being harassed. Even before
the tragedy, some internet messageboards were
becoming hateful. Hate-ful. Full of hate. What does
that say about those who are so consumed?

Our fury at the terrorists is, with full justification,
multi-faceted, but much of it is about the killing of
innocents, people with whom they could not have any
quarrel, for they did not know them. When we turn that
fury on people we do not know because of what they
wear, how they worship, or where they or their parents
were born, do we not begin to slide down the slippery
slope toward a similarly heinous attitude?

How will we heal from these tragedies? Slowly, I think,
but most definitely not by hating. Certainly the
perpetrators must pay full penalty for their actions, but let
not the innocent suffer with them. If we become like unto
the perpetrators in our actions, and in our anger, then
they win.

Whether it is the neighbor in your grocery store, or the
families living near wherever the originator of these dark
deeds may be, let us resolve to protect them as surely as
we wish that our loved ones had been protected.

Where the perpetrators hoped to disrupt, let us keep
moving forward with our lives wherever we can. Where
they sought despair, let us hope. Where they attempted
to sow hatred, let our love for the innocents of humanity
grow ever stronger.

Diana Robinson

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Copyright 2001 Diana Robinson, Ph.D. Work in
Progress may be reproduced in its entirety only,
including this copyright line. Disclaimer -The contents
herein are solely the opinions of Work in Progress
owner, and should not be considered as a form of
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