Live With It

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"There once was a young girl," my professor began as she slowly took the time to make eye contact with every student sitting in the front two rows, "who was the apple of her father's eye. From the time that she was small, she and her father had a special bond. Every night he would read her stories about amazing places and they would sit in her room talking long after her mother thought the child should be sleeping. The father treated his daughter like a pampered princess. It was often quite a source of contention between her parents and certainly made her other siblings envious of the relationship. In the girl's eyes, her father could do no wrong. When it came time for the girl to go to college, she chose one close by so she could live at home. Her family was fairly wealthy, but she didn't stay at home for financial means. She stayed because she wasn't quite ready to leave the shelter of her doting father's arms. Then one day while she was out shopping, she saw a young man who was by far the most handsome person she'd ever seen. He noticed her watching him and smiled. The girl became immediately smitten but he was gone before she could speak with him and she wasn't sure she'd even know what to say. The next day she returned to the place where she'd seen him. Disappointed at not finding him there, she sat at a little outdoor cafe' nearby and had lunch. Suddenly he was there standing by her table. He shyly asked to sit down and she nodded, unable to stop smiling. They talked, mostly of inconsequential things as her food grew cold and in the weeks that followed, they spent almost every afternoon together getting to know one another."

My professor stopped at this point in the story and prompted, "What do you think will happen next? Seems pretty cliche' so far, yes?" Several of my classmates offered opinions of a "happy ending" nature. Others, like me, remained quiet, reserving judgement until we had more information. "Shall I continue?" she asked us. I wasn't sure if she would really stop the story and move on if we all said, "NO", so I did the obligatory nod adding my non-answer to that of the group.

"One sweltering summer night, with the entire house opened up in the hopes of catching a late breeze, the girl woke abruptly to the sounds of gunfire," our professor continued. "The girl crept quietly to her bedroom door and opened it only a crack. When she peered out into the hall, she saw a group of men with guns dressed in dark clothing standing at the open door to her parent's bedroom. She cried out and they turned as one. The largest man in the group came and pulled her from the room, dragging her down the hall and shoving her to her knees. She could see her parents both killed in their beds and she began to scream. The man grabbed her long hair and yanked her head back, placing the tip of his gun to her forehead. 'NO', another man shouted. 'Leave the girl,' he pleaded and knelt beside her. She knew that voice. And when he pulled the covering from his face, she recognized the face she had grown to love. It was the boy she'd been meeting in the square every day. 'Why,' she asked on a sob. 'It's not what you think, love,' he said in a rush. 'We are the Lone Wolves. Your father is responsible for hundreds of deaths. Men, women, and children died at his hands or his orders all in the name of greed. We starve and live in constant fear of when his death squads will come for us and it has to stop,' he attempted to explain. The girl looked back into the room where her parents lay, shaking her head and unable to process the nightmare of a picture he was painting over top of the world she had known since birth. Surely this was a mistake. Surely the man he described could not be the one she knew and loved, idolized even since her earliest memories. 'You lie', she said, spitting at him. His warm face in that moment turned to one of hate, the care for her erased in the very moment of her denial. She shoved him back and got to her feet, running to her parents and was shot before she reached them."

The class was quiet, our faces showing the utter shock at a love story gone horribly wrong. Our professor waited, one minute, then two, as the weight of it sunk into our hyper-processing brains. "Once you know a thing," she said, breaking the dead silence, "you cannot unknow it. You can deny it all you want, but that does not negate the truth of it, no matter what you believed 'before'. Knowledge is like that. ALL knowledge is like that, so keep that in mind as your world and ideas change throughout your college experience and on into your adult life. And as you learn new things about people, places, and the world around you, each of you must decide for yourselves what, exactly, you are going to do with this new knowledge." It was a powerful message, one that I have taken with me every single day since that story was first told. I have lost count of how many times I have had the "truth" of it confirmed over and over in my lifetime and how difficult those lessons have been. Some things we learn can be dealt with in a proactive manner. They can inspire us, be a call to action, or yes, even a call to arms. Other things, however, we must simply live with. I'm still not very good at that, even though I've had years of practice. And while I agree with the message "Knowledge is power," that I've taught all of my students, as well as my children over the years, that is not the end of the story. Knowledge can also be very painful, shattering us in a myriad of ways. Knowledge changes us, not always for the good, and also puts the responsibility of choice absolutely in our face. Live with it? Sometimes you have to leave what you learn right there. It's an ugly truth when that is the only option, but it is one I am coming to terms with.

On a completely unrelated sidebar...I wish all of the children participating in some form of Trick or Treat a very safe and happy Halloween (this extends to the large children who are merely a child at heart).

Love,
A.