I am pained by the rash of school age children being murdered in China. Today, a man with a meat cleaver walked into a small private school, killed 2 adults and 7 children, then committed suicide. On April 30, a man armed with a hammer injured five preschool children in east China before setting himself on fire. On April 29, at least 28 children were injured when a man with a knife attacked a kindergarten in east China. On April 28, a man attacked 18 students and a teacher with a knife at a primary school in southern China. March 23, (the first report of this kind) a former community doctor stabbed eight children to death at an elementary school in eastern China. He said he was upset about his lack of a love life before being killed by a firing squad. This story received wide media coverage and seemed to set off a series of copy-cat killers.
I cannot think of a worse feeling in the world then to lose your child, especially to a random murder. On the trust scale, humans are capable of no lower level of behavior. We labeled it annihilation, it means you are so angry and full of hate and fear you choose to annihilate the other person(s). You want to hurt them to ease your own pain and suffering. In a strange twist, many of these perpetrators end up annihilating themselves shortly after their desperate acts. The effects of such acts is a tsunami of fear that is surely felt by every informed person around the world. Chinese children are no longer safe… schools get locked down… machine gun carrying guards appear in the hallways. The carefree dreams and possibilities of childhood are replaced with fear. Trust becomes elusive for another generation and the world takes a step backwards.
This is why I am hurt this morning. I want to know why this happens, I want to understand what we can we do to stop it. I think about this everyday. I am committed to finding answers. I am learning when one of us get mentally sick it affects all of us. I believe that many of these ills be cured through the practice of integrity and trust (IT).
I have been thinking about balance as being a part of integrity, specifically the balance between the individual and the collective. It came to my attention when I reads that a Chinese women was quoted as saying the killer was known to be unbalanced. What did she mean? How does a person become unbalanced? In my mind I started to make the association between a person being unbalanced and a lack of integrity. Integrity means to be “whole.” When someone is unbalanced, or out of integrity, it means they are either: 1) so focused on the greater good that they forget about themselves, or 2) they are so focused on themselves they are no longer aware of the whole. The real problems happen with the people that are focused on themselves. Mental health is, in part, a balance between taking care of yourself and being aware of your effect on the world. That would explain why those who become self absorbed are said to be out of balance and tend to damage friends, families and businesses. Whole communities suffer when just one of us goes down this path. I would like to end this blog reminding us to stay in balance by taking care of ourselves and our would with this quote:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am not for others, what am I?
And if not now, when?
- Rabbi Hillel
Do you get “IT” ?
05/17/10 – Another attack was reported after I wrote this
05/19/10 – Another one today
