*Names and events changed to protect the honor of the deceased. He was a great person, he just took hard turns. If you knew him to, understand we were friends and I still treasure knowing him, but he did help me understand some hard truths about life that I think are worthwhile to share honestly.
In 1999 Elie Wiesel, author of Night and survivor of Jewish internment camps, spoke in invitations of the Clintons and said this:
Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.
Mr. Wiesel is a great author, and this speech in its entirety is one I use in my AP Language class. In fact we cover it about two weeks from now as a sample of argumentation and to study the use of rhetorical questions, which this piece uses effectively. The speech is available here: http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm
In church today Kim used a well known Wiesel quote that this later speech branches off from:
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
In our day it is a bit different than Wiesel’s, as the indifference of the people around the persecuted Jews did result in death, but the theme is true in all times. My biggest experience with this is a bit personal, and somewhat painful, but part of the reason I teach in the area I do and part of why I am pursuing the grad school degree I have chosen.
I had a friend in high school that was incredibly intelligent. We played a game together, Magic the Gathering, great for nerds with imagination, brain power, and spare time. We had a group of students that would play Magic in the debate room during ELO. We would travel to tournaments out of town together, play test in town, and honestly a good chunk of my social time in high school and college centers on this card game. It’s how I met my husband. My friend from high school was a great debater, national level. He lived two blocks away from me. We didn’t share many interests outside of Magic and philosophy, but that was enough to build a friendship. We were very different people though, especially in high school. Not many people would pick us out to be friends. I was an athlete, an A student, and he was a student who removed himself from the gifted program, talked openly about drug use, and didn’t get to walk across the stage with his graduating class.
*Ryan is probably the most intelligent person I’ve been friends with. However he fell into the trap of apathy, indifference, and underachievement. I remember one time asking him why he smoked and he told me “Darcy I’m about 350 lbs and I’ve already had heart trouble. I know I’m going to die early, so why waste the time not enjoying it?” He had a scar on his hand from being so fall over drunk that he cut himself when he crashed to the ground with a glass bottle of alcohol. I’ve never used any drugs, but I got a good drug education from Ryan because he seemed to try everything once and always wanted to tell the story. Ryan was also one of the most oddly moral individuals I have met. He would never cheat, lie, or steal and held to a strict moral code to himself, even if unconventional. He cared about helping people, thought America could do more for it’s people; yet, he never was able to really care about himself because he pictured his life ending early due to his health conditions. It did.
I admired Ryan, and yet always worried about him. He had so much talent, and in certain areas so much passion, but he just wouldn’t do the things he needed to do to take care of himself. A friend of mine went to pick him up one Saturday morning for a Magic tournament in Wichita. Ryan was at his computer, not breathing, not moving. He’d had a breathing mask that he was supposed to wear at night, and maybe he fell asleep at the computer without thinking of using it, who knows, but he didn’t go with my friend that day.
I can’t remember how many conversations I had with Ryan where he would tell me my belief in God was stupid, or that I tried too hard to succeed in a world where the American dream is corrupt, or that I was too naive, too idealistic. And yet he had a goodness to him: I knew he was idealistic, and in areas willfully naïve. And from our conversations I knew that at least at one time he believed in God. He changed a lot in high school.
I remember going over to his house once soon after his father had been arrested. He told me his dad was gone for awhile, but didn’t say where, or why. By his junior year he would tell anyone his father had been arrested for drug related crimes. By the time I was in my junior year in college Ryan and I got along less. He seemed to be drifting further away from who he once was, who I thought he wanted to be. His drug use got heavier. I remember not wanting to be around him anymore because he was more openly argumentative, told me more often I had stupid ideas, and really almost seemed to have an ego complex about his abilities. I knew he was going in a bad direction, and I became indifferent to my friend, didn’t talk to him, avoided places he would be, and at a point our relationship was openly confrontational. We had grown apart.
When he died I didn’t know what to think. Part of me said that’s what he was aiming for with his behaviors anyway, to die young. Part of me prayed for his soul and hoped his soul actually wanted prayer. I couldn’t believe it, didn’t know what to think of it, didn’t know how to make sense of it. My heart hurt for him, yet I wasn’t surprised, and I didn’t know how to express it. I still haven’t talked to his mother about it.
There were times he was hurtful to me, ugly to me, he probably wasn’t the best influence to be around, and yet I knew he was a good person; he was just wrapped up so far in a path of bad decisions. But there was a real quantifiable point in my life where I gave up on him. I said he had gone too far, seemed to difficult to be around. It probably wasn’t my job to save him. Whose job is it to save another free-willed individual? And he did push away attempts to help him see optimism again, to see himself as valuable in the long term scope of health and life. I don’t really know all the details of his health condition… but I still wonder if there were things that could have been done to help him feel more fulfilled and less self destructive. I still shake my head in wonder about Ryan’s story.
But when I go into my classroom I know I don’t want to let my gifted boys follow that type of path. I know there are individuals that school just doesn’t provide much intellectual stimulation for, who goals seem to matter less for, who have a struggling home life – who become apathetic, indifferent. I loved Ryan as a friend, and really wish his story would have ended better, even when we came across our tough times. But I don’t want to let that happen to anyone else. I don’t want to become indifferent to anyone else who I care about and stand idly by as they fall deeper and deeper into self destructive behavior. It’s hard to be close to someone who is caustic to themselves and abrasive towards you, but I really wish I wouldn’t have a walked away from him as a friend. I don’t think I could have changed much of anything about him or for him, but I didn’t give him the chance to ask for help towards the end. I shut the door. I remember him when I teach, and try to give even more patience to the kids that seem to be pushing everyone away that want them to care for themselves, because if you let someone push away everyone who encourages taking care of yourself the only friends the person will have left are the ones who indulge in and encourage those self destructive behaviors that live for the moment and burn up the future. I failed in my love for my friend because I became indifferent, gave up on everything but telling my husband (who was also his friend) that Ryan was once quite different. I still pray for his soul, but I hope that isn’t the only thing I can do for the next person like Ryan that I meet in life.
*Names and events changed to protect the honor of the deceased. He was a great person, he just took hard turns. If you knew him to, understand we were friends and I still treasure knowing him, but he did help me understand some hard truths about life that I think are worthwhile to share honestly.
