DOVER — The other day, as I was pulling into the parking lot of my local post office, I experienced momentary amnesia, I think, due to a new condition I am going to call violence numbness, or VN for short.
It registered to me that the U.S. flag was at half-mast - an image still asynchronous with normal, day-in-the-life, small-town Vermont, still a sore thumb among the more cheerful and reassuring touchy-feelers on the landscape this time of year: the twinkly Christmas lights, the kids' dispositions growing sunnier despite the weather as they slide into the home plate of the holidays and the lack of school that awaits.
So it was not that “something bad” did not reach my consciousness. Rather, my brain, so clogged with so many recent events and tipping-point-reaching crises, had lost its ability to pinpoint, to sort out what was tragic and reflect upon it, whatever “it” was.
The reason for the day's lowered flag was lost in a crowd of bruising news stories, of pictures and videos, of reality's current composition and trajectory being majority grim.
The reason behind the flag's position escaped me but was nevertheless diluted, disrespected.
The importance of my ruminating on it, the reaction time of my empathy - if even for those first few moments - was diminished in an unusual way.
* * *
My first thought was, “Oh, yeah. Paris.”
Though the tragedy in that city had occurred weeks ago, it seemed perfectly necessary to continue preserving any symbol meant to encourage those of us still living and breathing to hold in our hearts and minds the 130 people who died, to perhaps - should we conjure the fortitude to relegate our errands and shopping and iPhones to secondary status - try to make sense of why.
But Paris, it seemed, had had its time on the dowel and was supposed to step aside, to hibernate with the other lost scenes from previous tragedies, to fester behind the curtain of our busy lives.
“No, it must be San Bernardino,” I realized, feeling stupid and alarmingly callous, since the killings in California were so obviously after Paris.
I knew that. Shouldn't the most recent mass murders have been upfront in my mind? Wasn't that the way it was supposed to work? What was wrong with me? What was happening to my memory? How was all this violence affecting it?
I wondered: What transpires when a body cannot fathom? Do our emotional channels develop barricades? Are they chopped into chunks that cage the flow of healing between walls of mystification and paralyzing dread?
* * *
Perhaps this is why I am not very popular at parties, particularly around the holidays, when throw-caution-to-the-wind consumerism and entrenched positivism is the expected decorum when discussing, say, gun control, or sexual assault on college campuses, or industrial animal agriculture's degradation of pretty much everything, is considered not only rude but weird.
'Tis the season to be jolly. But how?
The thing is, I am feeling heavy before I have even gained the Dec. 23th–Jan. 2nd weight. I feel the pervasive violence, both domestic and foreign, infecting my bloodstream, making its way to my brain, desensitizing me, if even by just taking a few stabs at my memory.
How can I be a pacifist vegan, disheartened by the thought of a pig roast, shaken by the dichotomy of the upswing in dog rescues against the 9 billion other animals killed every year in America for taste buds, and at the same time no longer shed tears when I read about shooting sprees?
Have I thought about who and what died today? Do I know how many people? How many animals? How many acres of the Amazon? How many rights? How many species? How many glaciers? How many black bodies? How many kids' basic needs?
There are not enough flags and flagpoles in my town of 1,100 people to remind me to honor such loss.
* * *
It turns out, the flag at half-mast wasn't San Bernardino, either. It was National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, in which we remember the 2,403 victims killed on Dec. 7, 1941, by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a mass murder about 75 years old.
I am both horrified at the thought of it and encouraged, that after all these years, we are still observing those who died.
But as the exponential violence continues, thousands of people who are killed, will be killed in the future, or are being killed as I write right now will not be remembered in such a consistent and somber way. The more prevalent the violence in America, the less value each of our lives has.
I read The New York Times article “Gun Deaths: Rare Elsewhere, Common in U.S.,” on Dec. 6, just a couple of days before my mail-errand-turned-VN-self-diagnosis. It highlighted the drastic range in likelihood among different countries of being killed by a gun.
• In the United States, for example, there are 31.2 gun homicides per million people, versus 0.1 gun homicide per million people in Japan.
• A person walking a street in Tokyo is more likely to be struck by lightning than by a bullet from a Glock.
• People in Germany or Scotland or even China should justifiably worry more about falling objects, cataclysmic storms, or plane crashes than they should about automatic rifles or open-carry laws. I imagine that they drop their kids off at school with a peace of mind we only used to enjoy.
Ah, the nostalgia of the holidays.
* * *
I live in one of the safest states, in one of the safest towns, in the country. I know and cherish this. But the gun culture in the United States has afflicted me. I, like many Americans, have come to accept its presence, against my will but resigned.
It feels so very intractable: there are guns everywhere, on our screens and on our streets. We can work to change laws, but in the meantime, we are all one errand away from a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time war zone.
If we cannot stop the violence in the short term, we can embrace a short-term strategy for coping with the havoc it wreaks. We can be more nonviolent. We can look for opportunities in our daily lives where we can bring more peace. This is a broad, subjective suggestion, but its mission is succinct.
We make choices every moment of every day, and each one has ripple effects. We need to start asking ourselves a question before we act on anything, because - let us face it - we are desperate.
Will my choice perpetuate the cycle of violence, or will it commemorate a culture of peace?