Where’s the reset button?

Yesterday a man died. For 5 hours yesterday we watched him face down in the grass while we were on lock down in our lab. Dead man – as he became known – pulled a fire alarm, drove into the evacuating crowd, got out the car and attacked the crowd with a machete. Dead man became dead man when a campus security guard shot him to stop the butchering. Dead man apparently had two friends with guns who drove off and held people hostage in a parking garage 2 buildings down from us. The official emergency message (known as the Buckeye Alert) from the university: Active shooter on campus. Run. Hide. Fight.

Five hours later, walking home I was a different person but the rest of the world was just as I’d left it. I’ve marveled at this phenomenon several times this year. Firstly while driving around after our burglary in a vain attempt to find any thrown out lab books. I remember looking out the car window realizing my PhD had just been stolen and to everyone else it was just an ordinary Sunday afternoon. Then again a few months ago trying to do my final submission in between protesters and riot police, locked buildings and rocks and oh so much glass. Finally driving off campus the rest of the city carried on as normal – seemingly oblivious to the war zone just a few hundred meters away.

And we leave, going back to business as usual. We come face to face with truly ugly. Scary. Dark. Inhumane. We experience the very worst of mankind and then promptly dust ourselves off and go right back to our everydayness. This morning there were no traces of yesterday’s madness. No traces of Dead Man. After the rain last night even the dropped coffee stains on the pavement yesterday were gone. Someone had literally hit a reset button on the week.

I guess the ability to bounce back is vital to our societies survival but I’ve begun to question whether we’re moving on perhaps a tad too quickly? Are we becoming desensitized to the dark the world throws at us?

Yesterday Dead man broke a community. He single-handedly rattled the worlds of all those who were there and all those who received that awful Buckeye Alert. Dead man severely injured a dozen people – their wounds will heal but how long will it take for them and their families to feel secure again? My own time with Dead man gave me a lot to think about yesterday – much of which I’m still processing. Before Dead man was Dead man he had a life. He had people. Now those people have to figure out life without him. They have to grieve his unconscionable actions mixed in with their sadness for their loss. Dead man was a dark, misguided soul, one who apparently couldn’t find any other way out. This should not be something we just hit reset over. When we experience the dark that the world throws at us shouldn’t we mourn what the world has become? Shouldn’t it rattle us? Shouldn’t it make us want to do better and be better? I’m pausing to consider that perhaps hitting reset as quickly as we can isn’t the right approach. Perhaps we’re not actually helping our society – or ourselves – heal. Sometimes the world should stop and reflect and figure out how we can better things.

Today the world continued to turn just as it always has but for me – before yesterday I’d never met Dead man and now his death will never be something I forget.