Tragedy and love

After any terrible tragedy, especially one borne of hate, illuminating, hopeful messages of love surround us—poignant, often defiant notes that try to fill the deep, dark void that such an enormous act of hatred creates. The message in all of them is clear: everyone deserves love.

Love is the only way we get through dark times. It’s what props us up and holds us steady when it feels like everything is crumbling down around us. Tragic events make us hug our loved ones a little tighter and take stock of what’s good in our lives. It’s what we cling to when the despair around and inside us feels so raw and endless. It’s the light that keeps us moving forward.

I am lucky to have really wonderful friends and family, terrific people that I love and support with everything I have. Their happiness genuinely and wholeheartedly is my happiness and their struggles my pain too. My heart fills and aches as theirs do. I can feel their love for me span the miles that sometimes separate us. I can feel it when they show up for me, however stubborn or silly I may be acting or however absurd the circumstance I’ve roped them into is. I can even feel it more powerfully when they lean on me in their tough times, when they need my help. 

Always, and especially in times following tragic loss, I am overwhelmed by gratitude for having all these people in my life to love.

My heart is full with them and with my puppy, who has quickly become my beloved and enduring sidekick and has taught me so much about my own personality as I see it mirrored back in him (apparently, it's true that dogs take on their owners' characteristics). Aside from his insatiable desire for social activity, little Lolly’s capacity for unfailing love for everyone he meets once or a thousand times is a reminder to me to keep putting love out into the universe. There’s no reason not to, and it causes so much joy.

It sometimes strikes me that Lolly is the only one who would notice if I didn’t come home. I don’t hate being single, most times I really love it, but sometimes I wish for a human partner to share accountability, passion, life. And, especially in light of unpredictable tragedy, someone who would know if the unthinkable happened to me one day and I didn’t come home. Because, let’s face it, the unthinkable seems to be happening more and more in this world. Wouldn’t it be nice to know there’s someone who would know to look for me?

National tragedies, even local tragedies, create lasting wounds in people, anxieties and sadness that have the potential to really take root, even if temporarily. One of the anxieties that glows brighter for me at times like these is knowing that if I were caught up in a random, senseless crime, there’s a good chance no one else in my life would know I had been there. No one might know to look for me.

I’ve heard over and over from many people that they don’t like to set their friends up because there’s a chance it could go very badly, and they don’t want to be responsible for that. But, isn’t there also a chance it could go very well? Wouldn’t you want to offer your friends the possibility of it going well? I’ve found in my vast (too vast, probably) experience dating that set-ups almost always go better than online dates. At a certain point in our lives, set-ups and online dates are really the predominate way people meet, but there seems to be a lot of reluctance to do the setting up.

As we’re all looking for some way to contribute a little more to the amount of love out there in the world and to help in the aftermath of senseless crimes, I’d ask that, first, you donate blood, time and/or money for the victims and their families who so very much need and deserve our help, and then that you think about your friends who might also be looking for a little more love in their lives. Set your friends up. Give them a chance to have someone know when they come home at night.