I know it’s been a while, and I wish I could blame my absence on school or work or any number of other things, but I can’t really. All I can say, dear people, is that I have been negligent.
I chose today to make sure to post. Today, you see, has been set aside to be a Day of Silence in the blogosphere, in memoriam of the Virginia Tech victims. Let me get something straight: I am not posting today to be spiteful towards these people who are abstaining in remembrance. If that is how they wish to give their condolences, then more power to them. Secondly, I also realize that the VT people don’t need anyone else speaking for them. Thanks to the Big Media, we got 24 hour coverage of the whole thing. (That’s something I take issue with too, but that’s for a later entry)
I’m posting today not to be in defiance of that effort, but I am posting today because that’s what I think the world needs to do. I’m not saying that what happened was a big deal, but what I am saying is that if we allow this event, or any other disaster, to make our collective wheels stop spinning, then the gunman/extremist group/whatever wins. A disruption, a pause in the status quo, people stopping to gawk. It garners attention, which is exactly what is desired.
My heart goes out to the families and friends of the VT shooting victims, but forgive me if I refuse to give attention to a madman. Forgive me if I encourage VT, their families, and their friends to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and show themselves, the university, the city, the state, the country, the world that they are made of the tough stuff. They are strong, and they are victorious, and they are unstoppable.
Gunmen, bombers, natural disasters, you name it: we are a country who stands strong, and we are a country who remembers our dead by working to better the place in which they so needlessly died. We remember our dead with honor, not with pity, but with staunch resilience to continue on, to improve, to edify, to make sure the world remembers what we stand for.
I realize that the VT shooting was no Civil War, but Abraham Lincoln spoke truthfully when he said “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
So, be strong; live strongly; remember fondly your family and friends who died, and work ever the harder to make them proud.