Our world is becoming a depressing place. With people having to foreclose on their homes, the price of oil making it nearly impossible to even afford to drive to the local shops, and basic food supplies harder to come by, it’s no wonder we witness yet again another sad and tragic figure taking out his frustrations on the innocent people of Tokyo.
Yesterday, Tomohiro Kato did what many have done before. He got angry, frustrated, bitter and depressed, and decided that the world will pay. But this time, a gun wasn’t used. Instead it was a knife, and his car. He ran people down in his car and finished them off with a knife. Bizarre to say the least, but the reason for the attack is all too common.
Like the Virginia Tech massacre, where an angry, twisted young Korean man also decided that people must suffer as much as he did, this young man in Tokyo felt exactly the same:
“I’m used to acting like a good person. I can fool everyone easily,” Kato wrote, adding he was struggling to make friends.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0
‘Struggling to make friends’. Isn’t this all too telling? How easy do we make it for sensitive, shy, introverted people to make friends or join our inner circle? This was written about Seung-Hui Cho, the Korean man responsible for Virginia Tech:
‘In the ensuing investigation, police found a suicide note in Cho’s dorm room that included comments about “rich kids”, “debauchery”, and “deceitful charlatans”. “His thought processes were so distorted that he began arguing to himself that his evil plan was actually doing good. His destructive fantasy was now becoming an obsession.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre
Suicides are seen by some as ‘an escape’, where the person is regarded as ‘copping out’. But I think it is evident that we don’t do enough to truly identify and understand what people have really gone through in order to get to that extreme state of being. They say people who commit suicide have thought patterns that are so beyond reality, that they have become dillusional. And in that dillusional state, they believe that what they are doing is for the betterment of society, or at the very least their immediate family.
“Recently, peoples’ relationships have become strained,” said 29-year-old Taishi Ikeda, who works in the publishing industry. “There’s no-one to talk to when you’re troubled.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0
Life can be a miserable place, and it promises to get even more miserable. Maybe this is why Barack Obama’s message of ‘Change we can believe in’ is hitting a chord with younger voters. We need a seachange in our thinking. We need to talk to our neighbours, worry more about our friends, and identify when colleagues are buckling under their own personal strain.
I got the title of this blog from an episode of ‘Sex and the City’, when one of the characters was visiting someone living in a very depressing part of town. It sort of sums up how people feel everyday about the situation they find themselves in. Where most of us just sigh heavily and get through those days where we find ourselves in the middle of ’shitsville’, there are those of us in our community who find it harder to cope, and need us to at least be aware of what they go might be going through.
“But when these people fail to fulfill themselves in socially acceptable ways, they are treated as losers and their frustration builds up,” he added.
Some members of the public pointed to an economic downturn and government policy as reasons for rising frustration.
”Politicians don’t think about the people, they raise taxes and change the healthcare system,” said Kentaro Inoue, a 56-year-old worker for an architectural firm.
“I think that’s what breeds this violent behavior. People begin to hate society when they can’t succeed.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0
Society in general has a huge responsibility to celebrate important events in each other’s lives. Whether that’s acknowledging a friend’s cultural value, respecting religious beliefs and customs, or taking more of an interest in the things that matter to those close to us, it is more necessary now than ever. As external events in our world start to close in on us, we are going to need each other a hell of a lot more.
Unfortunately, as our own personal crises become tougher, we will inadvertently turn in on ourselves. If that trend continues, our newspapers will be filled more and more with hapless humans at the end of their rope.
Enjoy your day…and make someone else’s day enjoyable too.
