Monday, April 16, 2007

Vulnerable...

After class today, many of my fellow students went out on the roof to blow off a little bit of a pre-graduation steam. All during the class, whispers could be over-heard about the incident at Virginia Tech. Some had friends who were in the same building that the shooting took place. Others were struck by how vulnerable we all really are. We are all really tired and stressed out about finishing everything up for reviews, the Open Studio, and finals - many of us were on edge all day, the tension was palatable.

Even though it was cold and it was drizzling and we were all tired, it was good to gather around and laugh and talk and try and find a little bit of community in such a dark time.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Cindy said...

I think the sense of community is a good key...
I read through some of the news reports and commentaries, everything depended upon the police response. Students were text messaging to family members at home, miles away...what if there were a network among students so that all could feel a sense of strength in community within the school and if something occurred like this, the message could be spread around between the students...no more sense of being vulnerable if everyone can look out for everyone else, rather than depending on some outside authority...which only increases the feeling of being vulnerable.

11:36 PM
Andrew Thornton said...

I think it's easy to look back and say, "Should of... could of... would of..."

Despite whether or not we feel vulnerable or secure... we are ALL still vulnerable. In the U.S. how often does someone go on a suicide mission, with the intent of killing others? Maybe once every couple of years. How often does it happen in the Middle East? Pretty much every day or every other day.

It's a false security that we've been lulled into.

7:45 PM
Cindy said...

My intention was not to say what should have been, but to look at the overall pattern and see what might be done differently in the future. If we don't learn from these tragedies than they'll just keep repeating themselves.
I have found in my own experience that if I feel vulnerable, or expect a conflict, then it will come to me. When I focus on centering myself and feeling my inner strength, I attract situations that reflect that back to me. It's not that these things don't happen, just that humans are conditioned to believe that they are a fact of life and won't go away, and so we perpetuate them.

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Albert Einstein

11:36 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)