Losing Our Compassion: That Was Someone’s Child

It’s Halloween week, and my main job is logistics. Billie Jean MJ and a zombie cheerleader have to make it out trick-or-treating with their cousins, costumes intact. Aliah loves a good zombie. She’s been some version of one for a few years running, and I respect the commitment.

I love this part: the dressing up, the decorations, the candy I’m “saving for trick-or-treaters.” What I don’t do is scared. No scary movies. And I must have trust issues, because there’s no way I’m paying to walk through a haunted house. Don’t touch me, and don’t chase me.

But the scariest thing I saw this month wasn’t fake. It’s that we are losing our compassion, and I don’t think that’s a question anymore.

Last Thursday I kept getting reports that I-20 and I-45 were gridlocked. I didn’t think twice. Those highways have been shut down for construction so many times lately that I figured it was more of the same. More orange cones. More reasons to leave early.

It wasn’t construction. For about four hours, everything stood still because a man was up there, hurting so badly he couldn’t see another way. He didn’t survive.

I didn’t see the videos, and I don’t want to. But plenty of people watched them, and plenty shared them. Then came the comments. People complaining about how long they sat. People saying he should’ve just hurried up so they could get home. Jokes. Actual jokes. Perhaps.

That was somebody’s child. Somebody’s son. Maybe somebody’s daddy. And the loudest thing a lot of folks had to say was that he made them late.

We have gotten so easily inconvenienced.

I’ll say this plainly. My dad died by suicide. Not this way, but the how doesn’t change much. If sitting on a highway for four hours could have brought him back, I’d have sat there until the gas light game on and then some. Anyone who has lost someone like this would say the same. But too many of us don’t care until it shows up at our front door. That might be the most American thing about us.

And losing our compassion doesn’t stop at the highway. The Pentagon says the Fort Hood shooter’s execution on December 3 will be livestreamed. Livestreamed. I guess this is the Hunger Games.

Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about the death penalty. It’s not one size fits all for me, especially when I think about who has historically held the gavel, who sat in the jury box, and who usually ended up on the other end of it. That’s a conversation for another day.

What I do know is that watching people die isn’t new in this country. For generations, white crowds gathered to watch Black men and women be lynched and burned. They brought their children. They packed lunches. Some called it justice, some called it God’s will, and some bought the postcards. Right here in Texas, in Waco in 1916, thousands watched a Black teenager named Jesse Washington burned alive.

So I’m not really talking about the nation; that is a low standard. I’m talking about us. We, of all people, know what it means to have our suffering turned into a spectacle. We know what it cost. And now some of us are the ones pressing record.

That’s what scares me.

We’ll put on mask Saturday night and take them off by morning. That other mask worries me more. We wear it every day, and it lets us watch somebody’s worst moment and feel nothing but annoyed.

If we’re losing our compassion one scroll at a time, we can get it back the same way. Don’t press play. Don’t share it. When traffic stops, say a prayer instead of a complaint. Check on your people, even the strong ones. Especially the strong ones.

And if you’re the one standing at the edge, however that looks for you, please stay. You’re somebody’s child too.

If you need someone right now: Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or text HOME to 741741. If you’ve lost someone to suicide, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has support for loss survivors at asfsp.org.

Tell me in the comments: when was the last time a stranger’s kindness reached you right when you needed it?

BTW: “I am because we are.” -Ubuntu, African philosophy

Other Post You May Enjoy:

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Embracing the Waves: Navigating the Ebbs and Flows of Sadness