I had another column in mind for this week. I try not to write in immediate reaction to current events, filling your in-boxes with just another piece of chatter seeking attention in a world full of chatter. I search for perspective, insight, the longer term, the deeper meaning.
I shelved my first plan this morning after watching Anderson Cooper’s CNN interview with Angel Garza, the father of a 10-year old girl, Amerie Jo, killed at Robb Elementary this week.
The Robb School shootings are a tragedy; serious changes in gun ownership rules in this country are long overdue. That’s so obvious it should not need restating. And it will not happen any time soon.
But this video surfaces a deeper issue, one at the root of the desire, especially among males, to own and use a gun in America. The toxic way men are raised here, the country I grew up in, goes to the heart of why and how these horrific crimes happen.
Put simply: men are raised to bury their feelings, to be stoic, to be closed-off Marlboro Men, to be invulnerable. To avoid empathy or compassion, avoid letting their feelings show. Those are things women do; only a “weak” man emotes and cares.
We pay the price for this emotional stifling. Men pay a price in stress, violence, medical problems, jail terms, early death. Women pay a price in carrying emotions for everyone, in the stress of railing at men who don’t feel, and suffer the abuse of male violence and anger, which will out around the edges of the stifling of emotion. Rage and misogyny emerge sideways, lethally, violently, in rape, abuse and toxic outbursts.
What the Cooper/Garza interview shows us is the other path. In a beautiful, vulnerable way.
Angel Garza is the man every man should be. He is emotional, open, sad. He weeps freely, repeatedly, at his loss, mystified that his daughter paid the price for the toxic madness of the shooter.
He cries when he says “she was just trying to do the right thing,” and “I just want to know what she did to be a victim.” And “oh, my baby, I need you my baby.”
Especially when he says “how do you look at this girl and shoot her?”
It is raw; it is real; it is deep; it is vulnerable. It reflects the profound love he feels for Amerie, for her brother, and for his spouse.
Stop reading and think for a moment. What if this happened to your child? It is the way any human, male or female, or in between, would feel in their heart. It is free, loving, emotionally offered.
In response, Anderson Cooper gives a stunningly moving Master Class in empathy. He looks, listens, asks gentle, empathetic questions. He wipes away his own tears. At the end, he hesitates and gathers his own thoughts, before he wraps it up. His voice breaks on his last words: “ten years old.”
And the touches. Oh, the touches. I count at least eight times Cooper reaches out in a physical way, putting his comforting hand on Garza’s shoulder. Interviewers don’t touch, they don’t empathize, do they? During at least half of them, Cooper’s hand lingers on Garza’s shoulder, in care and empathy. Instead of a perfunctory “thank you,” he offers, instead, a compassionate reach-out: “I wish you peace in the days ahead.”
This is the alternative, the way all men should be. All people, whatever their gender. Gentle, vulnerable, compassionate, human, strong. Were it so, perhaps the desperate urge especially men have to own and use a weapon would begin to erode. The wildly irrational urging to shoot children in a school would disappear. The gut hatred of the “other” would lose its toxic hold.
Mine is not a wild dream. Cooper and Garza show the way. There are males out there who know how to feel, reach out, be vulnerable, show compassion. This is not weakness; it is strength. I am grateful to these two for pointing the way.
Moving commentary. I was brought up the same way, although I never thought of shooting anyone. Anderson Cooper is different. He is a gay man, typically a different sort of man than the emotionless man you and I were taught to be. This makes me then wonder, how did you—and me, at least to a degree—become a man of compassion?
You have made an important point. I think -- especially with all the investigation many young people are doing on gender and gender fluidity that things are changing in certain parts of our culture. It is also true that we are still very much a Male (with capital M) world. The best I can say is that as men spend more time with with the the idea of there being feminity in the strength of masculinity they will open up more. Slowly. We must have discussions about men and guns and what that means. I think of Kyle Rittenhouse with his macho stance and his macho gun at all of 17. He thought he looked cool. On the right he is seen as a hero. One of the men he killed was severely mentally ill. And that is enough for the right to exonerate Kyle. What a service he provided they say. It's like they are hunting rabid wolf in the woods. They gloss over that Kyle, a kid, murdered two people. Passed over is discussion of mental illness. Passed over is a discussion of what happens when citizens take up arms for the sake of law and order. Passed over is the discussion about men, feelings and self expression. Men like to have answers. They like to talk (yeah there are quiet men but men do like to talk about stuff they know about) The grieving man who was so openly and courageously talking about his daughter is an example for us all. But what was so powerful about the interview was Anderson Cooper. He is a professional journalist and journalists are all about asking questions, stirring the pot to get the next shocking question to get the greatest possible bang for their buck. And what so incredibly powerful about this interview were the silences. He was not only comfortable with these strong overwhelming feelings pouring out of this man, he allowed him the time a space to grieve with silence. On TV. With the ubiquitous TV clock ticking to the next commercial break Anderson Cooper asked no questions. He gently made small comments. "I heard she loved being a big sister." It was master class on touching the grieving with compassion.