100th Post

So Blogger tells me this is my 100th post. I feel like this should be terribly profound. Sadly, I am unprepared for such a notable posting. Here's what I've got though...

As I've been in Pittsburgh this week for the Stephen Ministry training, I couldn't help but be very aware of the story of a man shooting people in a gym not far from here. Truth is, I'm such a CNN junkie that I wouldn't have missed the story otherwise. But getting to see the local news coverage as well (where the story is the main focus, not all that overshadowed by the apparently dramatic return of Bill Clinton to the international stage) gives it some emphasis that I suspect is absent elsewhere.

Sadly, time and again we've learned that there is little we can do in the moment to stop a person bent on destruction who is prepared to die. In fact, if people could never overcome their fear of death, stopping violent people would be much easier. They'd take fewer risks, and probably be easier to catch and stop.

At the same time though, overcoming one's fear is also a mark of a healthy, mature person. Someone who doesn't deny that the unexpected, and even very disastrous, happens, but who is not crippled by that thought.

I recently finished reading Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable. It is, absolutely, the most fascinating book I have read in a very long time. I recommend it to anyone.

In the book, Ripley examines people's reactions to unthinkable events by studying people's behaviors during and after events like 9/11, fires, and violent attacks. She looks for not only how people react (which itself is very interesting) but also what qualities and characteristics make a person more likely to survive physically and emotionally after such an event.

One of her interesting findings was that people who do well during and after an attack generally share three main characteristics:
-they feel they can influence their lives (notice influence, not control)
-they believe they can learn lessons from both the good and bad experiences in their lives
-self-confidence

I think those are the three (I finished it before I came to the training, so I don't have it at hand to double check).

You know what? I think these three qualities are also meaningful when we think of how we can just generally thrive in life. Enjoy life. And the great thing is that Ripley explains that while some people may have these qualities in greater or lesser amount because of both genes and upbringing, anyone can grow in these. Honestly, I can also see how an active faith can help you grow in these as well.

Another cool finding in Ripley's book comes when she looks at heroes. There are few commons threads, especially ones that cover more than just a portion of heroes...except one: people who we would call heroes seem nearly across the board to have been raised by parents who did not punish them harshly, but rather reasoned with them, and through that taught them that they should act responsibly in relationship with others. These are the people, who when others are concerned with their own self-interest, are most likely to put that aside (or at least push self-interest to the back of their minds) and take risks to help others.

There are some aspects of Ripley's book that I still have questions about...like how after coming to that conclusion, she still tries to assert that helping others at possible risk to self is merely an evolutionary quality aimed at increasing one's appeal to the opposite sex.

Over all though, the book as really made me think. Be more aware of the situation around me...not paranoid, but educated. When I flew here, I got a seat on an exit row. And I made sure I understood how to open the door. I'm thinking of taking an advanced driving course. I was reminded in her book that in a terrible situation, we cannot really know exactly how we'll react. The best we can try to do is general live calm lives (calmer people react better across the board) and train our brains and muscles how to react when the shock of a moment takes over.

So I've been thinking about all of this as I've watched the news. Mourning how the shooter seemed so miserable, part because he himself struggled with those three qualities. If we believe his writings, largely because of how he was raised. And I wonder how the people in the gym reacted based on their own personalities.

As they told us when we took a Myers Briggs in college, our core personalities are not who we are when we're calm, but who we are under stress. Sadly, too many people have had to faced terrible situations this week.