The first thing I did was look out the window.
On Friday morning, along with millions of others, I read the horrifying headline on my iPad. I went to the window to see if my stepson’s car was parked out in front. He and his friends love the midnight showings of blockbuster films. His car was there and only then did I realize I’d been holding my breath.
As I let it out, my worry about my immediate family gave way to a wave of sadness for the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who were subsumed in grief that morning not far from my kitchen window.
Like so many Coloradans who lived through Columbine, I also felt overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness. Is there nothing we can do to push back against this madness? Already the debate has started over gun laws, some advocating for stricter regulations, others favoring more guns so someone could have stopped the killer. Four decades in the news business and watching government up close leave me confident our politicians, no matter how well intentioned, will do nothing to fundamentally alter the arc of our society.
That task falls to us. If we want a more compassionate community, a place where those approaching the ragged edge of madness might be noticed and helped before it’s too late, don’t look at the statehouse or White House. Look in the mirror.
We have lost our sense of community, of oneness. Our deep partisanship over public policy issues — taxation, environmental regulation, and yes, gun control — is spilling over into a nation split into camps. Not only are the people we disagree with wrong about policy issues, they’re wrong about life. They are the other.
We’ve been here before. In the years before the Civil War, the growing divide in the country played out violently in many corners of the nation long before war broke out. In 1856, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks nearly killed Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor for a perceived insult over slavery. It was just the most high-profile example of a society increasingly at war with itself.
So are we helpless to stop ourselves from going down that same path? In truth, this will not be the last time someone’s tenuous grasp on sanity gives way and they seek the limelight with an act of horrific destruction. One thing we know for certain is that killers at Columbine and Virginia Tech and the Aurora movie theater had lost their capacity for compassion, their gene for empathy. You cannot slaughter with impunity if you feel the pain of your victims.
We can push back with a determined effort to be more compassionate, more considerate, more civil people. While we all quite naturally first think of the welfare of our own family, we can will ourselves to think of our larger community as family and treat them accordingly. Open a door for someone with an armload of groceries. Stop on the bike path and help change a tire. Stop judging someone solely on how they look or how they’re dressed.
I’ve been called a lot of things during a professional life in a newsroom and working in support of state government. Naïve is not one of them. But look at it this way: Even if an act of kindness doesn’t change the world, you’ll feel better about yourself.
Try it, Colorado. We’ve lost so much already. It can’t hurt.
Edward P. Smith is the managing editor of ncsl.org and a former longtime editor at The Denver Post.
