A Shot in the Dark - Part One

It's Halloween and I'm afraid. My fear has nothing to do with witches, werewolves, vampires or zombies: It runs much deeper. Some of the things that I am afraid of are perfectly reasonable fears and others are totally irrational, but make no mistake about it, I live in some level of fear every single day of my life. This living in fear thing is not entirely new to me. In fact I remember being somewhat fearful for the entirety of my life all the way back to my early childhood. In some ways, being fearful is just kind of how I am wired. Most of the time I have been able to mask and/or manage my fears, but there are times when my fears get the best of me and affects every aspect of my inner and outer worlds. When they are at their worst, my fears have reached such an intensity level that they have spawned panic attacks. Fortunately for me, those panic attacks have been episodic and rare. 

While many of my fears fall under the deep and existential fear category, there are a number of real and present fears that distract me during the day and make it harder for me to fall back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night. Over the last week though, my number one fear has been gunfire. Like many of you, I read far too many stories from all over the world about shootings and random gunfire. For the most part, I have never actually felt a real and present danger of gunfire. Being in relatively safe situations has been part of the privilege that I have lived with for the majority of life. More recent events though, have called into question whether or not I still feel like my life and my family's lives actually are relatively safe. 

A week ago today, I received a text from a friend who was checking in on me because they had heard about a shooting in the River North neighborhood near the restaurant I work at one day per week. I had not heard anything about the shooting, but I had been downtown at the restaurant earlier that day so I did a little sleuth work. What I discovered was that at 4:28 PM central, a man had been shot on the corner of Rush and Ohio streets. There was no other information about the victim or why the shooting took place, but I immediately took note of the time. I had walked out of the restaurant at 4:25 PM last Monday and turned north to walk to Trader Joe's passing directly through that same street corner minutes prior to the shooting. I must have been in Trader Joe's while it happened. 

I started to further contemplate the timeline in my head and revisit the moments leading up to my exit from the restaurant that day. When I left, I almost ran back to the kitchen to refill my water bottle, but I decided that what I already had in the bottle was enough for the commute home and that I didn't want to waste any more time getting out the door. That's part of the reason that I knew it was exactly 4:25 PM when I left the restaurant. I had a call at 5:30 PM and it typically takes me about an hour to get home. If not for the fact that I was "rushing out the door" I might have been on that street corner as the shooting was occurring. Thinking about that potential timeline has continued to leave me feeling unsettled. 

Two days later on Wednesday night while I was hosting a men's community call, I heard a series of loud popping noises in the park behind our Chicago two flat. We live in a nice area, but since we back up to a river park, there are occasionally teenagers shooting off fireworks in the park. This is a far more frequent occurrence in the summer near the 4th of July, but it does happen at other times of the year as well. This particular series of popping noises sounded much more like rounds being fired than fireworks going off. Since I was in the middle of leading a call, I cranked the window closed and figured I would investigate further when I was done. 

The minute I walked out of my callI knew that something was off. When I reached the front room where me wife Christiana and my daughter Emma were sitting, I could unmistakably feel the weight of tension and fear. Christiana asked me if I heard anything interesting while I was on my call and also indicated that she didn't want to discuss it any further while in Emma's presence. I acknowledged that I did in fact hear some "fireworks" or something loud and asked if she knew anything about the noise. Christiana shielded her mouth from Emma's view and simply whispered, "You're not going to like it." 

What I came to find out is that a group of young men were standing on the street corner a few houses down from our home and decided to fire their guns in the air for fun. Obviously the rest of us who live in the neighborhood did not think of this as a "fun" activity and numerous people called the police. Multiple squad cars arrived. Seconds later, through the front room window, my wife heard "Sir, do you have a firearm? SIR PUT YOUR HANDS UP!!" yelled repeatedly. The handcuffing and arrest took place directly on our front lawn! 

When you combine these two recent events along with another mass shooting in Maine and a potential active shooter lockdown last Thursday at Northeastern Illinois University, which is less than a half a mile from our house, I have been on edge even more so than normal over the last week.

Fear is an interesting animal to tame even when it arrives on its own, but when you combine it with shame, it creates a mindf#&k of epic proportion. I have a tendency to do this thing where I overthink situations and then begin to psychoanalyze myself while I am in the process of overthinking. It can be a hot mess! My current state of self psychoanalysis has delivered me to a place where I recognize that I have a lot of shame about the fact that I am fearful of living in a situation that others around the globe would give up everything else they had to be able to experience. In fact I need look no further than the streets of my own neighborhood to see desperate families who have come to our city from other parts of the world with the hope of finding something better than they left behind. My heart breaks for each and every one of them. 

My current environment, the one that I deem to be less safe than it used to be and less safe than I prefer, is still WAY more safe than the environment that millions of families and children around the globe live in every second of their lives. Who am I to complain about a few gunshots that might have actually been scary, but in reality never actually put me or my family in true danger? The true reality is that it is a privilege to live a life as comfortable and as protected as I have lived thus far. It may be irrational for me to feel shame over my privilege, but shame is not typically a feeling that pays credence to what is rational and what it not. Much like fear, shame has the ability to spin itself into a downward spiral creating a shame cycle that can deliver one to the darkest places of the human psyche. 

That dark place of self-shaming is a place I have spent four decades trying to avoid for a multitude of reasons. I have utilized every tool I could find, some of them healthy and other ones, not so much. My adult years have been intertwined with things like therapy, mindfulness practices, yoga, personal development and other forms of physical activity. I have also fallen subject to substance abuse and other abusive patterns of behavior which can temporarily quiet down the fear, while at the same time amplify the shame. It can be exhausting.

About a week ago, Emma and I visited a place called Safety Town out in Naperville for some pre-Halloween trick or treating. Safety Town is a miniature version of downtown Naperville where kids can drive pretend cars, learn about traffic signals and crossing streets as well as many other safety related things. To me it felt a little bit like the Neighborhood of Make-Believe from the world Mr. Roger's and for a moment I was taken back to my own childhood where learning safety meant fire drills and tornado warnings, not active shooters drills and incoming missile warnings. Thinking about where we are at as a species can sometimes make me very sad. Whether I like it or not though, sitting in the moment and experiencing that sadness (and that fear) is an essential part of identifying the best path forward. Sometimes deciding what path to take next can feel like a shot in the dark, but the only way to know how to proceed is to have the faith to take the next step, regardless of where it might lead. 

It was with that same faith that I decided to write this piece and label it as a "Part One" with no real idea what the other parts might look like or when I might choose to create them. I realize that most of this particular weekly reflection is a series of incongruent thoughts, but I also know that it was important to put those thoughts into words. I write for myself first and foremost and I always will. What I also know is that I have a lot more information about the inception points of some my fear than I had a few years ago and that there is a story yet to be told. I know that I have done an extraordinary amount of work to process and heal. I know that the healing that we are all currently experiencing is universal and ongoing, even when it doesn't feel much at all like healing. Most importantly, I know I want to do everything in my power to model a healthy relationship with fear for my daughter Emma so that she can learn from the parts of fear that can be her teacher while at the same time be is less likely to be subject to the more irrational downward spirals. 

Well, I think I will leave it at that for this time. Not all stories get to have a neat and tidy little bow at the end. I can feel a "Part Two" brewing somewhere inside and I promise to share it with you whenever it bubbles up. For my Celtic ancestors, All Hallow's Eve was a mere part of a larger celebration called the festival of Samhain. The Ancient Celts recognized November as the beginning of the New Year with faith, hope and a sense of guidance from their ancestors. My prayers are that you all find that same sense of opportunity and hopefulness in the days ahead. Much love to you all and blessed Samhain, 

Jim