We are all shocked, horrified and saddened by the loss of life in Tunisia. These were ordinary people, like you and me, taking a much anticipated break in the sun. Wanting nothing more than to relax and be with their friends and family. What happened is beyond comprehension.
Atrocity and disaster, for me, have to remain beyond comprehension. Some things are too big and too awful for human beings to understand. But struggle to understand we do. Why? Perhaps because this struggle is more comfortable than simply accepting that dreadful things happen that we, human as we are, cannot get to grips with.
Ending the struggle might mean less thinking and more feeling. Trying to understand entails thinking, and the more we think, the less we are present with our feelings. At lunchtime today, I sat in front of the television, seeing the photographs and hearing the names of some of those who were killed, and cried for them for their families and for the distraught Tunisians who were there and tried to help. There was no more working it out, no more thinking or rationalising. Sitting in incomprehension, we are left with pain.
Accepting that we cannot understand, that these things are beyond understanding, leaves us nowhere to run. There is nothing we can do. Nothing. All that is left is to accept our powerlessness, to sit with the overwhelming sadness, empathy, anger, even, that arise once we stop trying to think our way through this.
But in our doing nothing, in our awareness, rather than thinking, there lies our power. That is where we find empathy, compassion and love. We can’t change what has happened and we may not be able to control what will happen in the future but we can be a loving presence, adding to the light of the world rather that trying to analyse its darkness.
