When we are young, we know that older people die. Occasionally (and tragically) a young person, but we tend to think of death as intended for those who have already lived full lives, who have experienced what they were meant to experience, whose bodies have worn down. That, we understand, is the way of things.
When we have reached a certain age, it can hit us by surprise how close we are to an ending. How thin is the veil that separates us from death. How thin it always was, without our knowing. How quickly it can vanish. We hear it in the title and encounter it in the story of that famed novel by Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” a book that seems especially poignant today with its depiction of Soviet tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 to crush that city’s rebellion.
The world has many ways to kill us, yet we never tire of inventing new ones, each larger and more potent than those before it, or more clever and surprising. We witness their destructive powers now, just as we have always witnessed them, and yet we cannot seem to stop the endless cycles of violence.
Like many, I have said that Black lives matter because it needed, and still needs, to be said. And I agree that all lives matter, which also needs to be said from time to time. Black and White. Russian and Ukrainian. Israeli and Palestinian. Migrant and citizen. Man and woman. Straight and gay and queer and trans. Every life is precious. Every human being a child of God. No one is vermin. These are not contradictory statements. It is not a competition.
Today such statements seem even more urgent. They take the shape of questions. Like, where are the peacemakers? Where are the voices of reason? Where is the groundswell of human compassion? Where is the courage to stand against hate? When will we come to grips with the immediate, devastating, irreversible, and ultimately personal consequences of war? How can we do so in a way that promotes just outcomes for all the innocent victims of terrorist atrocities and oppressive regimes?
In the words of that decades-old anti-war anthem by folk singer Pete Seeger (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”), “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”
Beautifully said!