It Doesn't Make Sense

The Oscar Pistorius murder charge has led to a whole round of break room "whys?" It always happens. A celebrity commits suicide or struggles unsuccessfully to overcome addiction. Murders, suicides, descent into the hell of addiction. A crazy people randomly kills innocents. We always search for the sense of it, even when it makes no sense.

When a story is written, whether for the screen or print, the observer wants to know why. The story must be reasonable. If it doesn't make sense it just doesn't work. Perhaps that's why news shows spend so much time on these tragic stories: It feeds our need to know why, to have it make sense.

I have to wonder if that isn't a fault at times, the need to have it all make sense. Maybe sometimes it really doesn't make sense or, at least, shouldn't make sense. I know we want to avoid tragedy repeating itself. I know we have a biological need to learn for our own protection. But I wonder if there aren't times when it's almost better just to accept certain behaviors, certain events, as having occurred outside the realm of human sensibility. After all, we don't need to understand the physics of electricity in order to knock a child's hand away from a light socket.

Sometimes I have to wonder if our pursuit of explanation doesn't simply feed the need to create a rational world in the face of irrational events. At the same time, I have to wonder if our attempt to make sense of the tragic acting out doesn't somehow humanize the event-- somehow soften the event-- when in fact what we really need to do is abhor the event-- step away and recognize that certain things don't make sense and shouldn't happen even though they do. Perhaps certain things don't deserve a closer look. When it comes to relationships, boundaries, trust, and fidelity I think there is a lot to look at and a lot to learn. When it comes to people pulling out guns and killing a wife, a lover, a son, or a daughter, I'm just not so sure I want or need to know all about that individual. In fact, I'm not sure it's not a fantasy to think we can.  Perhaps sometimes these are just broken people; people that I'm really becoming less and less interested in getting to know any better.

As for the break room "whys" in the above case, it's always important to remember that, first and foremost, step one belongs to the courts. Guilt or innocence.