President Biden delivered his State of the Union address on Thursday. I stayed up to watch and was incredibly impressed with the content and delivery. He pulled no punches and maintained a steady energy for the entire hour. He covered every pertinent topic to his case for reelection and made an even stronger case that he was not too old for the job. But one thing I noticed that was absent from the monologue was the issue of gun violence. He spoke briefly to the perceived migrant crime wave, which actually does not exist and he made that rather evident. Still, he said little to nothing that I can recall about curbing the fear and violence being done to our kids while they are at school as a result of gun culture.
This feels like a tired old topic, which may be why he did not approach the topic. That, and we are in an election year and that is not one of the major issues that, when polled, voters seem to say is at the top of their list of important issues. But I saw something this morning on Threads that brought a combination of topics to mind with a broad application to all of us in many areas of our lives.
In the post, which I am having a hard time embedding so you will have to click this link to see it and watch the brief clip, a teacher is pulling out a corner of her classroom revealing a bulletproof safe room that has a whiteboard outside. This is frustrating for multiple reasons.
First, considering, especially Republicans, are opposed to funding our public schools, one has to wonder how these would be paid for if they were widely implemented. Given that teachers are largely expected to stock their classrooms from their own pockets, I am having a hard time seeing this being a viable solution to the problem.
This brings me to my next, and primary point, which is that this sort of thing is nothing more than a band-aid fix to a larger problem. It does not address the underlying problems that make something like this necessary. The prevalence of guns within our country and how easily they are accessible by our children is the real issue, and a bulletproof safe room does nothing to solve this.
In fact, it avoids those underlying causes completely.
We see the monster in the room. We know it is there. We know what we need to do to fix it. But we are unwilling. So we either find temporary fixes and act like we have done everything we can at best or we try to do nothing and act like there is not even a problem to begin with. I guess there is a third option here, in which case we create a problem and then play like we are the victim and have no hand in why these things keep happening to us.
In any case, we are not taking any concrete actions to address the problem.
But this is not about guns or gun violence today, although that is a vitally important topic, especially if you are a parent.
Rather, I want look at the broader concept at play here: we do not take enough action to address the underlying problems in our own lives that create the situations and damage that needs repairing. All too often, we ignore those root causes. We are content to just put bandages on our hemorrhages over and over and over again despite the anemia resulting from the loss of so much blood. We are dizzy and euphoric about the way things once were but are not taking the necessary steps to get ourselves back to that place.
It could be that we do not know the root causes of our problems. Maybe we have struggled with some issue or behavior or line of thinking for so long that we forget when it even began or what triggered it. In this case, we need to get there. We need to take ourselves back and back to the earliest point when we can recognize these patterns and find out what made it happen. This will often take the help of others, trusted friends or a therapist. But you will never address the problems in your life until you figure out how you acquired them in the first place.
But you cannot stop there. You cannot just say, “This made me who I am today” and misinterpret the idea of being yourself and embrace those bad traits or attitudes that have become normal as though they are just who you are as a person. You have to look at how you got there and say you do not want to be this way anymore. That you do not want to hurt like this anymore. That you do not want to hurt others like this anymore.
Do you need to address those symptoms or behaviors? Absolutely! But addressing the symptoms without addressing the causes will never lead to healing or to the ability to live to your fullest potential.
Indeed, put a bandage on an oozing infection but unless you find a way to stop the infection you will never be rid of the infection.
The thing about this, though, is that addressing those root issues might require a change in how you live your life or what you think you are entitled to. Just like addressing the issue of gun violence might require a redefinition of what the right to bear arms means or encompasses. Because keeping things the same never solves anything. And that is the hardest part. Because addressing those deeper causes for things involves changes that we might not be ready to make. Or that we are afraid to make because we are afraid of what those changes are going to mean for the future.
But I promise you this: the freedom that results will be infinitely better than anything you have ever experienced.