Sometimes the Universe whispers, and if we fail to hear it, it shouts

I am listening to the whispers.

**Watching this amazing TED talk on the immigrant American shot by the born in America white guy from a broken family and system….

**My own personal experience of being attacked through words…without the attacker knowing or ever inquiring as to why I did what I did, and who I really am…

**The other incredible TED talk given by Monica Lewinsky….and her journey of being so thoroughly publicly vilified for being a 22-year-old woman who made a very bad mistake, and how she has turned that situation around to point out the way our culture has commodified shame.

**The ever-increasing number of stories about how ISIS is recruiting young people to its bloody cause.

And the question I am asking is what has to happen to people for them to do the things that they do to each other?

What has to happen to a white man born in Texas in America to give him the reason to go into a mini-mart and shoot a person of Asian/other ethnicity? Boom. No questions asked.

What has to happen to a kid to motivate them to fly to the Middle East to be a part of ISIS?

What had to happen to the person who attacked me without any effort made to ask why I did what I did in the way I did it?

If we do not seek the back story…if we fail to ask the questions…if we jump to conclusions and make wild arse assumptions, we are part of the problem.

Knowing the back story invites understanding…understanding allows empathy and compassion…

Having a very difficult childhood, raised in a poor, addicted family without access to consistent love and guidance, doesn’t make shooting someone right…but it does raise the question of how to respond to this type of incident. And is the problem individual or systemic, or both? Understanding also enables us to engage with solutions that are based on compassion.

I think the world needs more compassion than it does the right to bear arms.

Photo credit: Suzan Petersen via Compfight