Columnists
One in a million
There is a truth we’ve all known since we were children. We learned it when our parents read Little Red Riding Hood to us, or when we watched the evening news. There are bad people in this world.
There are sick people, angry people, violent people. There are people with deep, irrational hatred in their hearts, wild whorls of misplaced anger and a need to feel something beyond their own despair in a world they feel just doesn’t understand them.
And sometimes, those people get hold of weapons—of guns, or bombs or planes—and they tear a wide, red hole in our hearts with the badness inside them.
For victims, and for those close to them, they leave wounds that will never heal. But beyond that, for those of us who watch helplessly from behind screens and through newspapers and radio waves, they remind us what we learned as children: The badness of one stranger can suddenly and unexpectedly destroy our sense of safety and take away people we love.
And when that happens, we talk about how to stop those bad people. How to prevent them from yet again tearing those painful holes inside us.
We talk about banning guns, discouraging radicalism; we talk about preventative police work, public policy; we discuss mental health care and the deep and dangerous world of the web.
We hold vigils, light candles, send messages of peace and love, embrace our neighbours, come together and shake our heads to shake the fear that maybe that could happen here, to us.
Lots of conversations happen when the shrapnel from one bad person’s implosion cuts into our psyches.
And those conversations are good to have. If they lead to connection, or better yet, action, they’re even better. And while much of the U.S. has yet to limit the sale of automatic weapons, sometimes, in some places, changes are made for the better.
But while we’re having those conversations, it’s worth noting something that goes unsaid in news reports and stories about the Big Bad Wolf.
Those bad people are one in a million. Probably even less. They are vastly outnumbered. This is likely small comfort to the families mourning lost loved ones this week, yet it is important for the rest of us to bear in mind.
For every bad person in this world, there are at least a million good people. People who care and love. People who take care of their families and others in their communities. People who do good deeds, who smile at strangers. People whose anger or sadness is tempered by love and joy. People who would accept differences rather than hating them.
They are your friends and family. They are your neighbours and colleagues. They are the people all through your community and in communities all over the world. They are most of us.
It’s hard to keep that in mind in the aftermath of a terrible act. But each of those acts was committed by just one bad person. It’s worth remembering. Hopefully it helps us repair those holes.
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