Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Over the past couple weeks, one question has been weighing on my mind heavily: how do we keep from being desensitized to violent acts, while also not allowing our empathy to render us defenseless? Furthermore, how do we put our own feelings aside to give communities their due diligence?
I love writing with everything that I am. That’s how I ended up becoming an editor at The Daily UW. Recently, the editorial board at our paper decided to release a collective letter regarding the tragic murder of a member of our very own UW community, Juniper Blessing. We had an editor’s meeting where our lead reporters on the story gave us all the information they knew about it, so those of who weren’t directly doing coverage could contribute to the editorial. Sitting in that newsroom, hearing in detail how Juniper was stabbed over 40 times, her roommate begging for answers, and the fact that the perpetrator had been in other residence halls was horrifying. In an instant, everything hit me like a ton of bricks. I completely broke down.Â
As I stared at the shared document, trying to think of something, anything to put down, I couldn’t. I am rarely rendered speechless, but I was in that moment. How do I report on something like that? What even is there to say? But that’s the norm in journalism. You’re constantly having to cover gruesome stories and ensuring your approaching them with delicacy to be certain you are doing justice to the people involved.Â
At that moment, I seriously reconsidered pursuing journalism as a career. If I was that shaken by merely contributing to an editorial on the murder — not even directly reporting on it — how am I going to do this on the regular?
A little over a week later, a shooting occurred at the Islamic Center of San Diego, in which three members of its community were killed.
While I was still struggling to comprehend the devastating reality of what had happened at our campus, another tragedy had befallen another community I hold dear. I knew the news had reached my young students, and they were scared and sad.
I wanted to shield them from it. I wanted to tell them that everything was going to be okay. But how could I promise them that? I was absolutely dreading going to work on Sunday. How do you tell a bunch of 9-year-olds that people will want to harm them just for existing, and that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it? That they will have to live their lives constantly looking over their shoulders?
As I sit here now, putting this all out on paper, I worry that I’m coming off self-involved. That the things I just shared are horrible, and I’m somehow making it about me.
But should I have no feelings about these things? Should I allow myself to become so used to suffering and hate that it has no effect on me? Is that the solution?
I don’t think it is. That shouldn’t be the goal to strive for. Losing your humanity, losing your capacity to feel for others — that’s never got us anywhere. We need to learn how to balance empathy with the commitment to the roles we have to take on.