|
NORTHERN
IRELAND| Democracy & Social Change
1st
of 1 reflection
I’d
never met anyone who’d killed another
person before. I’d especially never
met anyone who’d blown up an entire
restaurant full of people. I had never
thought that my peers and I would sit
down with such a person and actually understand
where his life had led him that would
have made such an atrocity possible. But
this did happen. I did talk with such
a person – a gentle and extremely
intelligent individual who got swept away
in the troubles of Northern Ireland.
The
murderer, once a faceless evil person
who lived only in history books and in
my imagination, sat in front of me with
his mind and heart like an open book.
He killed not because he wanted to, but
because he had to. He was not evil, but
a man driven to extremes that he would
not reach under natural circumstances.
He knows killing is wrong and is trying
to keep others from this situation. But
what struck me most was how easy it sounded
to end up in the IRA. It began for him
so slowly that the change was almost so
unnoticeable until he had taken his first
victim. It’s truly frightening how
easily one’s environment can cause
an honor student to murder for the sake
of his own family. It was strange to meet
the person behind the gun. So many people
in other parts of the world go through
this metamorphosis in themselves. Maybe
if we understood the person behind the
gun, we could find a way to get them to
put it down. It sounds too easy, but understanding
is never easy.
|
