More Americans are killed in mass shootings each year than U.S. soldiers killed in combat
and suicide rates have doubled since just 2007.
When you add the opiate overdose epidemic, twice as many Americans are killed every year
than all the US soldiers killed in the entire 20 year Vietnam War.
117,000 Americans are dying each year at the hands of some dark psychological force.
We all may wonder - What is going on here?
What’s the source of all this despair?
And how - how can we heal it?
There may be a solution far simpler than any of us had imagined.
Amid the Columbine shootings, Congress commissioned a National Longitudinal Study using statistics and data science
to look for causes of violence and self-harm in tens of thousands of students.
There’s been a discovery - a surprising, salient, scientific indicator more predictive
of violence and self-harm than any other factor science has managed to measure.
And it is simply this: If someone feels disconnected from their peers - they have become high risk.
It turns out that disconnection could be the single most destructive force in human nature.
Even the cells in your body are programmed to kill themselves if they are disconnected from their peers.
That’s what prevents a stray heart cell from becoming cancer if its isolated in another organ.
So if every cell of our beings is programmed to commit suicide when disconnected -
what does that tell us about our human nature?
We are beings whose very lives depend on connection.
Deep in our genetic memory, disconnection and rejection remind us of the death sentence
of being banished by our tribes.
School shootings and suicides are just the symptoms of something far deeper.
Disconnection, rejection and isolation are the real disease.
And connection…
Connection may be our vital cure.
When we connect with one another - life takes on a whole new meaning.
Hardship takes on purpose.
Our communion with one another summons joy into our hearts and an outpouring of love.
The dark shadows of a death wish can be washed away in the light of a simple heartfelt encounter.
But If we refuse to make meaningful connections with those we wouldn’t normally befriend...
then horrible tragedies we cannot forget, will continue to befall us, drop by drop,
loss by loss, until in our own deep despair, against our will - we’re forcefully awakened
to this wisdom through the awful grace of these tragedies.
It’s perhaps time to ask ourselves: What kind of people are we?
What we need right now - is not division.
What we need right now - is not debate.
What we need right now is urgent compassion for any isolated souls still suffering in the shadows of dispair
because we have the power to save one another from an awful fate
- a fate that we now realize we all must share.
Just as terrible acts are the consequence of the accumulation of many minor slights and sins,
so too are these terrible acts averted by the accumulation of many small acts of
kindness and courage.
It is time to reach across the crevasses of our dissociative society to become
one with our neighbors again.
As your civic duty, it is called upon you to summon the courage to break the ice,
make connections with strangers and turn those strangers into friends,
because the cost of one more disconnected soul
has become far too high.
It’s time for our communities to become deeply connected again.
It’s time to engage in contagious acts of kindness and connection
that when released into the world
fill the voids of suicidal isolation...
with love.