listening

my heart has been dragging on the floor in behalf of the Virginia Tech massacre. i have been watching NBC, and as they play the footage of Cho Seung-Hui, i realize my tears are not enough to water life. the gun pointed at the camera, i feel like reaching my hand out and lowering it down. the awful thing is knowing that there are hundreds more just like him- somewhere in between the lines of birth and beautiful and broken, the cliché of angst-ridden teens.

i wonder how well we listen. sometimes we are so caught up in our own lives - and sure you may have heard that countless times - but think about the fact that we believe that we are in the right. there's no beating around it, if you didn't think your opinion was right, you would have changed it. so what am i asking? not that we should abandon all our senses, LORD knows that there are things we believe that are indeed aligned with the truth. i'm not just talking about listening to the obviously different, like the homeless man or the starving child or the single mom. i'm talking about the ones who are just slightly different. i tell you, it's harder to love those, because subconsciously, they are so close to being like us, but they're glitched up right there, that it makes us frustrated. maybe they have the same demographics as we do, but have all the wrong interests. do we listen to them? because their interests are a sign of what we consider to be immature? because they sing a different melody, because they sing off-harmony? because they look absurd or look too normal or look too meticulous or look too shabby? because he doesn't shave his face (or she doesn't shave her legs)? because they shop at the 99 cents store? because they shop at express? because they use $5 dictionary words or speak like a thesaurus? because they use emoticons or abbreviations or "i'm doing good" instead of "i'm doing well" or continuously using lower case? i'm telling you, they're so close to being us, but they're not, and so we don't listen. she's overly dramatic, he's overly egoistical. he wears spikes like a goth, she wears hot pink like a stereotype. they're so close to being us, but they're not, and so we don't listen.

i use collective "we" because i know i'm a part of the issue.
i can give you precise examples of how i fail to listen.

i wonder about Cho Seung-Hui's adolescence. i wonder if anybody listened to him. i wonder if they heard the gunshots while he stalked those girls, if they heard the gunshots while he wrote poetry. if they heard the gunshots while he sat quietly by himself, or while he stood in a crowd.

can you hear the gunshots?
"it's time for the listeners to start talking."





(eventually, the tulips die)

5:25 PM