There’s a meme now making its way around facebook and twitter. The basic gist is this: sure, Paris lost 129 of its own last night. But Lebanon just suffered suicide bombings, too, and besides there’s death and killing every day all over the world, so we should all shut up about Paris and stop acting as if its losses are more important just because it’s in Europe, and its people are majority-white and culturally Christian. If we are good and decent people, we’ll start changing our facebook profile pictures to feature the Lebanese flag, for instance, and by no means should worry about the impact of a huge influx of migrants on Europe’s economy and society, and so on.
‘Round here, well, we lost a friend on Monday, and, a mere hour ago, learned that another Scout leader just lost her husband. And, yes, at the same time, I could probably look up the week’s body count from Chicago gang shootings, or deaths in Syria and Iraq, or the number of children dying from preventable diseases and these numbers would dwarf that of our community, if all that matters is numbers. But I’ll be damned if I’ll allow anyone to tell me that I’d better mourn everyone equally, that I have no right to be more sad about the death of a friend.
And it’s the same with Paris — so many of us feel a connection to Paris, whether because of cultural ties, personal connections (visits there, an acquaintance with a Frenchman or Frenchwoman), high school French classes, or just the instant familiarity of that city. Do we really have to apologize for feeling as if a member of our (figurative) family has died?
As to the photo, well, I have no idea why, among the photos my husband took on his last business trip to Paris, there’s this one of four bunnies in a courtyard in view of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t notice this when we looked at the pictures when he returned from that trip. Honey, if you happen to check the blog after the Scout outing dinner, could you please tell me what this was all about?
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