You know that feeling you get when you've procrastinated on doing something... that all the gratification you should have felt when the task was accomplished has been replaced by a sense of guilt, that it wasn't done well enough, that it should have been different, or better, that more was lost than gained... I think that's what I'm feeling.
I was at a performance of Gershwin Alone at the Pasadena Playhouse when a woman shouted out "the news over the phone says Osama bin Laden is dead!" Thankfully she had waited until after the actual play had ended. To his credit, Hershey Felder responds with "...and what were you doing on your cell phone??!"
Thoughts raced through my head as BF and I drove home and I wondered what I would see when I turned on to the forum of all public reaction - Facebook. Stream after stream of outpouring emotion and fervor for our troops, our nation, cheers for the death of a man, articles citing details of crowds gathered singing our national anthem while chanting "U.S.A! U.S.A!" and "Hey hey, goodbye".... my heart dropped and I felt nauseous. This was a defining moment for me. There are moments that define your beliefs, the moments that answer the question to which you answer "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it".
I was 20 when 9/11 happened, and I remember the surge of patriotic fervor I experienced when we waged war on Iraq. I don't remember reading up on the process of how we arrived at this decision, I remember Colin Powell's presentation on WMD. I don't remember researching the background of our relations with Iraq and Saddam. I remember the take-down of Saddam's statue, I don't remember asking about our Exit Strategy or what Saddam had to do with Osama bin Laden.
These are questions I ask today. These are things I do today. And the more I read and the more I ask the fuzzier the picture becomes. It's much, MUCH easier to think linearly... to rely on a single doctrine and be steadfast on my own convictions regardless of what differing information I read and obtain. The word that's been ringing in my head has been "measured". I know individuals to be measured, especially when they've had a moment to pause and consider the situation. I find immediate reactions to be unreliable, that given time to deliberate, when presented more facts and opinions, many are more than willing to adjust their opinion. The frenzy to react, to declare with overwhelming enthusiasm your feeling on the matter, is while commendable, perhaps less than ideal in certain situations. I found this to be one of those situations.
I am feeling rather subdued. This was not a victory for humanity. This was not the death of the symbolic evil. I'm deeply troubled by humanity. I'm troubled with calling someone evil and by those who subscribe to the Christian faith to think that THEY have the power to determine whether someone is good or evil. Bush called him evil, designated an axis-of-evil and what followed was a decade of war and destruction in the name of the greater good, a higher power. Osama bin Laden saw us as evil. What does that mean?
This followed on the heels of the news from Libya. Two days ago when I scrolled through the news headline on my phone and came across the report on death of Gaddafi's son and grandchildren. I was stunned, the word 'grandchildren' stared back at me. Turning to my BF I hold up my phone, "I don't know how I feel about that..."
"What did you think we were doing?" he asked.
This is going to take awhile. And a lot more thought.
