My Response to the Orlando Shooting

I have struggled with what to say about the Orlando shooting, as there are so many people saying so many things. I am sending this out because I decided that it might be of value to share how I respond to human tragedy, hoping that it might add to the conversation of what to do. I am writing based on what I have read about the incident up to this point, and this essay is not an assertion of fact, but rather an exploration on how I respond to what goes on in the world at large. Please read on as I discuss response as a catalyst to insight and change...

How does one respond to a public human tragedy? It is hard to know. Responses to the Orlando mass killing have included anger, grief, sadness, rage, compassion, confusion, and even indifference. I myself have felt both anger and sadness over the needless loss of young lives and the overt demonstration of homophobia. But as the week goes on, I have to ask myself, as someone who did not personally know any of the victims, how to express these feelings in a way that creates change within myself, my environment, those who I come into contact with, and the culture at large. 

The process of doing this is challenging and won't be embraced by all, but I am sharing it because for me it channels grief into positive change, and turns tragedy into something palatable. I have to be able to look at what happened without turning away in order to be able to then look inside myself. So let's begin.

 The phrase "We Are Orlando" is currently showing up in many places. What does that mean? It means many things, but to me it means that I am both the victims AND the shooter. Not literally, of course, but in a way that prompts insight and self-reflection. Why would I use a national tragedy to engage in self-reflection? Because by separating myself from the culture and influences that contributed to this happening, I am nullifying the effect of anything I feel beyond myself. 

Orlando was not about me, but it is, in part, of me, and of all of us. I am familiar with the homophobia and self-loathing that the shooter seems to have been influenced by--when you grow up in a homophobic society, you automatically ingest some of that. It continues to be a struggle for me to make conscious choices around how I think about other gay men, especially those who do not "behave" as I do. Am I colluding with homophobia by "passing" as a heterosexual male, or just presenting myself authentically? Am I perhaps strengthening self-loathing in myself by censoring some of my own creative (and flamboyant) self-expression? Do I stick close to those who are like me, avoiding opportunities to explore difference and even disagreement in others? What is the experience that someone will come away with after spending time with me--inclusiveness or entitlement? How do my choices influence the local environment as well as the culture at large? Are there times when I am an aggressor toward others, and times when I find myself a victim of aggression? How does hate show up in me? 

These are challenging questions, but what I find is that the asking of them leads to a less impulsive response. It leads to a response that does not see merely innocence or evil, but instead sees the complexity of living in a culture and economy that is fueled in large part by fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar, and the many ways this manifests in our actions towards others. The response that comes out of this reflection has a better chance of including compassion and a desire to act. The response that comes out of this has a better chance of influencing positive change. A rant is often just a rant. I am interested in changed outcomes. 

I did not know the shooter. It appears that he suffered from several serious internal conflicts, and was probably also mentally unstable. This view does not excuse his horrific actions. When I work with couples I will say that both parties are equally responsible for the dynamic of the relationship, a dynamic that sometimes causes problems, but that each individual has to be 100% responsible for the actions they choose to take in response to this dynamic. The shooter is 100% responsible for his actions, but at the same time I admit to my share of responsibility for creating a cultural dynamic of fear and homophobia that may have influenced him. Rather than feel guilty about this (which stops the process), I consider how to then respond in a way that strengthens connection among others, rather than dis-connection. I consider how to respond in a way that deconstructs this harmful cultural narrative.

To put it simply, I resort to a question that I have used many times with clients when they are conflicted on how to act on their anger or grief: What would LOVE choose? This question cuts through the desire to hurt others or hurt myself, and opens up possibilities for healing action, even if it means saying to another, "Help me through this, I am having trouble getting to love." 

Do you notice how people help each other out after a natural disaster, or how communities have come together to support Orlando and the families who are grieving the loss of loved ones? THAT is an example of what LOVE would choose, and that is an example of the response that I work to cultivate, since love sent out is received by both the recipient AND the sender. As Pema Chodron writes, we get to decide which wolf we are going to feed: the angry vengeful one, or the loving compassionate one. You decision will hinge on what you feel will most nourish your human, being. 

Everything is an opportunity, even tragedy, to explore how we are being toward ourselves and others. We don't need to create tragedy to do this, thankfully, but when tragedies happen, this is one way to live through the pain. 

Choose love, and then action.

"Happy New Year, Faggot!"

They say that the new year is a time to start fresh, but upon even a cursory shake of the head, one can see that the reality is just more of the same, one day later. So why do we insist on marking this day so outrageously? My theory is that we do this because we can't live easily without the concept of "new beginnings". Even though life is a running through-line, we do better with sudden starts than we do with slow builds. The interesting part of this for me is that sudden starts are rarely lasting or effective--it is the slow build that yields the greatest and longest lasting results.

Everyone is familiar with the idea of the New Year's resolution and its comical track record of failure. I gave up making resolutions for myself many years ago, remaining content with reviewing progress on the slow builds, and occasionally suggesting resolutions for others that would make my life better. One of the areas of slow build that I continue to monitor is how I deal with my own anger, particularly when it springs from the effect of others' narrow-mindedness. Since the world is still overwhelmingly narrow-minded, you can imagine that I have spent a lot of time in the anger zone, mostly to my own detriment. However, by attending to the slow build, I am happy to report that I am much better at responding to narrow-mindedness, and as a result I am less at the effect of such.

The key ingredient to my progress in this area is the strengthening of the idea that the majority of narrow-minded behaviors are not about me. They are, rather, all about the initiator, and I find that a better use of my time is to worry more about what my response will be, and less about whether the behavior is right, fair, or should be happening at all. Some times I am better at this than at other times, as you can imagine. That is called being human, not perfect.

For me, the importance of the slow build places a different emphasis on the significance of New Year's. Rather than looking forward at what I hope to do more and less of, I prefer to look back and review what I have done more and less of, and make mental adjustments as needed. This results in less self-criticism, and more appreciation. As I always say to my clients in the therapy room, the best way to know if you are making progress is to see if you behave differently around the same circumstances.

***
This New Year's Eve I had a couple of close friends over for a home-cooked "fancy" dinner, and we had a wonderful time. As a good host, I naturally provided horns and noisemakers to be used at the appointed hour to usher in the "new" year. Right before midnight, we huddled in the cold on my patio and prepared to unleash a sonic celebration, which we did at the stroke of midnight. We blew our horns, we cranked our noisemakers, we screamed "Happy New Year", and we reveled in the sound of near and far fireworks and similar celebrations. New Year's Eve is one of the few times when it seems that everyone is on the same page, and it is not entirely inappropriate or unwelcome to wish complete strangers a happy new year. What my friends and I got, however, was far from a welcome return greeting. Fifteen seconds into the new year, we heard someone from the apartment building across the street yell out the door. What he yelled was, "Happy New Year, faggot!"

Happy New Year.
Faggot.

If you are gay, and perhaps even if you are not, you know the toxic sting of that word, loaded with painful history as it is, and it is easy to think that in 2015 we are in a "post-faggot" world. Alas, this is not any more true than the idea that we are living in a "post-racial" world. And yet I do notice that as the voices of ignorance and hate get louder, they more closely resemble dying gasps than they do war cries. It does seem that when the oppressed are actively oppressed, there is little reason for the oppressor to defend or assert the oppression in the open. Lately, as the barriers to equal rights continue to fall, I hear dying gasps all around me. Funny, that classification does little to comfort me, all the same. Last night, when our celebration was pierced with the sound of homophobic ignorance, I saw red.

What I wanted to do was walk across the street and confront the young man who had made the offensive remark, and I wanted to do this in front of his family and ask them what could possibly make them think it was acceptable for this to be yelled out the front door. I wanted to ask them why they place so much emphasis on community in their own family and circle of friends, but find it okay to treat their longtime neighbor like an unwelcome stranger. I wanted to tell them that this was not to be repeated, and that they owed us an apology. I wanted to scream at them, slam my fist into their door, spit on their window, hurt them. But I did none of these things.

At one point, not five minutes into the new year, I found myself benefiting from the progress of the slow build. I realized that what I knew was that someone had yelled out their front door, and that they had used the word "faggot". What I didn't know was why they did this, or if it was directed at our group at all. I thought that perhaps our noisemaking had awakened this person, and that he had responded to that interruption; but it didn't matter what the story was, because whatever it was, it was not about me, and I was not interested in starting my new year off with a confrontation. Those who know me know that I am not one to shy away from conflict, but there is a difference between letting someone walk all over you, and stepping out of the way. The former is making someone's actions about yourself, the latter is making it about them. Stepping aside is not the same as lying down. My decision to not engage was a way to keep the power of choice in determining my experience. I choose not to ruin the evening by making someone else's bad behavior about me. The anger dissipated like a mist, and we went on to enjoy the rest of the evening, though not without some effect.

I am a faggot, I am a queer, I am attracted to men and have been for as long as I can remember. This is just how it is, and there are many more like me, and this is nothing new. Same sex attraction is not a "sin", and we are not ruining anything, and for those who continue to think this way, you are approaching the day when you will have to admit that your god is prejudice.

The world is always waiting right outside for us, in fact I never really forget this fact, and last night it didn't take 15 seconds for the world to remind us that it is "more of the same, one day later". But my friends and I made the choice to continue celebrating regardless, because we have much to celebrate, and because the slow build reminded me that I have a choice. Last night we chose to step aside, rather than taking the punch or turning the other cheek. It worked, but not like a magic charm--this is the real world after all, and I do have tears on my face as I write this.

But it's progress. The slow build continues. More than I can say for the young man across the street, who may have a long life of shattered illusions ahead of him. Let's hope--both for his sake and for mine.