where civil blood makes civil hands unclean

Today I posted a story from the New York Times on my Facebook page. This story resonated when the tragedy of Phoebe Prince was first reported in local papers a few months ago. Because I grew up in a small Massachusetts town. Because I was the subject of taunts and cruelty as a kid. Because I work for Urban Improv. Because it is a horrible tragic story that should make any sympathetic heart bleed.

The story moved from small western Massachusetts papers and went national. Apparently, it resonates with a lot of latent sorrow from our childhoods… not to mention anger. So now, as part of our grieving process, we want to hold someone accountable.

Good. That should happen. We should be standing up right now and saying this is wrong. This should not be allowed or tolerated… or in the sad turn of events in South Hadley… ignored. We need to remedy this problem so some other mother doesn’t have to come home and find her daughter hanged in her bedroom.

But is pointing the finger at the school and the bullies the answer? If we have a law that says bullying is bad… is that really going to fix what happened? Is that going to stop another group of girls in another town from releasing their catty frustrations and angst in a less brutal way? Maybe. Maybe we can use this tragic story as an example. Maybe we can feel this wretched awful sympathy and determine that we will never ever allow it to happen again.

Until the next story.

One of the reasons I liked theater so much was it was a bunch of misfits. Teenagers … and eventually adults… like myself who were on the outside of the norm. We were often the ones at the other ends of taunts in school. We were ostracized for our differences of appearance, physical prowess, sexuality, intelligence… a whole bevy of excuses for the ‘normal’ popular kids to push us to the side. And yeah, that sucked and wounded our hearts. But the beauty of theater was the artistic muscle those wounded hearts hardened into. A strength that turned our teenage misery into a thing of beauty. It created our own world to which we belong… and ultimately shun the different with our own barbs and jeers.

Yeah, there is something noble in the transformation from the wounds of cruelty into art. But you know, the cruelty doesn’t dissolve. It comes back. And worse. Sneaky. Subversive. And after so many years of stewing, it can get really mean.

I’m not trying to condemn theater people with this argument. I am a theater person. My point is… that when we wound someone with insult, it isn’t like falling on the sidewalk and scraping one’s knee. Those wounds run deep. They can heal with some sort of outlet like acting. Or the outlet can be the boomerang of cruelty years later. Or days. Sometimes the cruelty is introverted and becomes self-destruction. Sometimes the cruelty is extroverted and lashes irrationally against anyone who pushes the wrong buttons.

Am I asking for sympathy for those girls in South Hadley? No. They will have to live with this for the rest of their lives. I believe in karma. I believe that the universe will return the favor. But I also believe that we have to look to our own karma and ask what do we do, what do we say, how do we hurt? We can’t condemn other people for doing these things without first looking within ourselves to see what we have done to other people, how we have infected their souls to believe that any level of cruelty – against self or against others is justified.

We live in a world where we celebrate and glorify cattiness. Turn on America’s Next Top Model or Project Runway or The Bachelor and it is criticism and namecalling made entertainment. We make a sport of it… so why do we expect teenagers to not have the full cognizance to know it’s wrong? Do we blame the teachers who have enough to deal with amongst 25+students per class, plus frameworks, plus tests, plus parents who complain because their child got a C? Can we just blame the teachers? Or the parents? Who work and are bewildered by this generation so wired and quickly tapping text messages it dizzies the concept of reality? Do we blame the town? Do we blame television? Do we blame free speech?

Blaming doesn’t solve anything if you ask me. It just makes excuses to blacken our hearts and turn the anger and cruelty around to a different audience. The way to stop this, in my mind, is to make kindness and forgiveness an example. To recognize our hurt and decide that it isn’t acceptable for anyone else to feel it.

Of course, I know this won’t happen. The world doesn’t work that way. There will always be mean people. I believe the mean people are usually just acting on their own hurt. That doesn’t make me like them more… and it certainly doesn’t make it easier to forgive them. But, the fact is, I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to taint myself with that vile behavior. And so I make the choice to take my finger away from blame and use it to type these words of another possibility.