I am a proponent of talking about most things. I am a verbal, so talking-it-out, works-it-out in most cases. However, I wonder if that's not always the case. I wonder if sometimes, talking about it one more time doesn't help.
I just finished reading Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's account of the disasterous 1996 climb of Mt. Everest where 12 people died in one expedition. Afterwards when the few survivors made it down the mountain people were obsessed with finding out what went wrong and playing the blame-game. Interestingly a relative of one of the survivors, critical of Krakauer's narrative said:
No amount of your analyzing, criticizing, judging, or hypothesizing will bring the peace you are looking for. There are no answers. No one is at fault. No one is to blame. Everyone was doing their best at the given time under the given circumstances. No one intended harm for one another. No one wanted to die. (297-298)
Additionally, Krakauer said people wanted to "catalog the myriad blunders in order to 'learn from the mistakes.'" As if finding those errors would make them "too clever to repeat those same errors." (286)
It's human nature to want to catalog, analyze, and go over one more time because this is how we learn, but is it always necessary? Or are there some things we should just allow ourselves and others to have survived?
2 comments:
So true. Sometimes knowing all the facts brings peace, but often peace comes when we realize that we don't have to have all the answers right now!
Love your last line.
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