By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Sometimes we ask the right questions. A CNN anchorwoman, reporting the near-miss collision of two planes only eight miles from one another prior to course change, asked in sheer frustration, “Why does this keep happening?” The fervency of her question leads me to believe that she wasn’t just talking about airplanes. We’re experiencing an epic failure of not just the larger, seemingly intractable systems that order our lives, like government, but even a dissolution of the more mundane commercial services we’ve come to depend on. We’ve spent a number of years asking “what?” This is a really good time to ask “why?”
Sometimes we hear someone use a phrase that sums up what we’re feeling, identifies what we see bubbling up in those around us. A firefighter who rescued a baby eighteen years ago and reunited with her as she graduated from high school, spoke of his week’s experience as a “whirlwind of emotions.” And although his emotions were mostly joyous, there seems to be a lot of that going around. How about you? A bit weepy these days? Me, I confess to frequent bouts of waterworks, unbidden and unexpected in their intensity.
This week a California woman, kidnapped at 15, walked into a police station after a decade, charging the man who took her, the father of her child, with various counts of kidnap and rape. Michelle Knight, one of three young women held prisoner by Ariel Castro for over a decade, defended the woman from judgmental naysayers on television today, eventually bursting into tears. It quickly became the must-see vid of the day. Watching her pour out her feelings about psychological bondage will bring a lump to your throat. We seem to be less able to stuff our feelings than we used to be. There’s raging frustration, sorrow, and anger, just below our surface.