On Mortality, Violence, and Consequences

On Monday, March 12th of 2007 I faced my own mortality. For the first time in my 25 years of life, I could see death out of the corner of my eye. It’s always been there in some for or another, be it some tragic unforeseeable accident or unseen disease or cataclysmic disaster, but on this particular night I became aware of its presence, of just how close it could truly be.

The man walked into our local Starbucks dressed in heavy clothes, wearing a cloth over his face and a hood and a pair of dark sunglasses to complete the macabre ensemble. I ask myself sometimes if perhaps seeing his eyes would alleviate myself of some of the nightmares, if perhaps I could have sensed that there truly was a human being behind all those clothes because in my mind’s eye, looking back at it, all I see is an outfit, a faceless being with no emotion and nothing for me to sympathize with.

He pointed his semi-automatic gun at me when I told him I had the keys to the cash register. I told him I could open the drawers and he pointed the gun at my stomach and when I think about it I can still feel the coldness along the left side of my abdomen, the icy expectation of pain that could have come at any minute. I opened the drawers calmly, spoke to the man in an even voice, explaining my every action and fought the numbness running through my body.

He told me to lay on the ground and so I did. I put my hands over my head, fearing he might turn back and shoot me and somehow thinking—amused even at the time of the event—that my hands might stop a bullet from piercing my skull.

And now her I sit, contemplating the event, running it over and over in my mind. At night, it’s all I can think about. Did this robber know how I would feel after having a gun pointed at my stomach? It’s the feeling that must be running through the minds of the dozens of individuals in our neighborhood who have been robbed just in this past few weeks alone. These nagging images that won’t go away, images of this amalgamated monster made up of denims and cottons and of course a pair of cheap sunglasses.

And as I work through this, I can’t help but wonder if this faceless victimizer can truly comprehend the consequences of his actions or his potential actions. Could he kill someone? Is it possible? We live in a society where violence on television and in movies is often rewarded, where the bad guys have no family and no friends and no good qualities and no mental illnesses and are simply “bad.”

That wimpy lawyer in “Jurassic Park” who got eaten on the john by a T-rex? Probably had a family. The psycho family in “The Devil’s Rejects” killed a lot of people, people who begged and screamed and yet even movie critics were rooting for the bad guys to “win.”

The Good Guys die valiantly, looking death in the eye bravely, but again there is no mention of the family that must bury him, the friends who must mourn him. If he survives by killing the Bad Guy, there is no grief counseling, no therapist to help the Good Guy cope with the fact that he has taken another human life, no matter how justifiable, as if it’s all in a day’s work and there are no nagging thoughts or nagging images to keep him up at night.

James Bond can kill with ease. After taking down a villain, the movie ends, because that’s the entertaining part. No one wants to see Bond take down a bad guy halfway through and then spend the second half of the movie in grief counseling, right? So how does that affect us, seeing these images again and again, watching violent act after violent act without an understanding of the consequences?

Every action carries consequences, and violent acts are no exception no matter how small or insignificant they may be.

Or justified.