So today, the country discussed Elliot Rodger and how his 22 years of rejection and suspected mental illness led to him deciding to kill people because he was still a virgin. It almost sounds like the plot to some kind of bad movie. Sadly, in this case, it's the truth. Six people are dead, more injured. The shooter himself is dead as well. Before all this began, he put out a video manifesto about why he wanted to kill people, specifically, why he wanted to kill women.
You see, he was frustrated by the fact that the beautiful girls on his campus wouldn't date him. He felt rejected and angry and blamed the women who didn't want him. He blamed women who had probably even noticed him. At one point, on his video, he said his plan was to go into the hottest sorority and kill all the beautiful blonde girls who wouldn't give him the time of day. He said he felt their rejection of him was a crime.
This reminds me of a Margaret Atwood quote. "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." The problem is, one of these things should not lead to the other. Someone laughing at you or rejecting you or ignoring you should not justify you ending their life. It certainly shouldn't justify you looking at the whole of a gender and deciding none of them deserve life just because you're not getting your way.
A lot of people will play up the mental health angle on this. They will dismiss his actions as the results of someone who needed treatment for whatever mental disorder was going on. I will agree that we do need to better address the mental issues happening with people in this country. There is no question that we're not doing everything we should to treat people for the things going on with them in a mental and emotional way.
But at the same time, we also need to address this idea that many people have about the nature of what they are owed in terms of life and happiness. Not everyone is going to get a lover. Not everyone is going to find someone to marry. Not everyone is going to lose their virginity. Not everyone is going to get kissed. And not one of us is entitled to those things. No one OWES us sex or relationships or even attention.
And I say this as someone who is in that boat. Past my 20s, I've not really been sexual with anyone. The person I wanted to marry ended up with someone else . . . and then later with another someone else. I made peace with it though, and in doing so, realized that the friendships I had around me were so much more stable than all of that. I realized that I had a roommate who was loyal and funny and very much worth spending my life with.
Some people will never have what is conventional. It just isn't going to happen for us. It may seem like we've been robbed of a choice. The truth is, instead, we've been offered a different choice. We can either continue to ache over never having what most everyone else seems to have, or we can look for alternative paths to happiness. Once we find these other paths, a lot of us realize that we were never really that suited for the normal stuff in the first place.
The alternative, of course, is bitterness, anger, and resentment. What follows that is a life of obsession where we blame everything else and find no contentment whatsoever. We drive people farther away from us. We stop seeing the friendships and companionship that is offered to us or just reject it because it isn't what we think we want. That is a very sad way to live. But as sad as it is, it still isn't an excuse for killing others.
My thoughts go out to the people affected by this.
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