Unexpected evils and accidental heroes

It was an inter-school event senior year and the best and the brightest had been chosen and collected for a problem solving event, an early hackathon so to speak. As bad of a student I was, somehow, I had made the cut.

There she was a pretty girl, class captain of another school and smart as a whip, a true leader, controlled, decisive and with the ability to organize her team into functions that utilized their strengths to solve what was put in front of them. Unfortunately, I was in another team.

At the lunch break, I had a chat with her and a few others and away from the necessary requirements of the competition, she was humble, reserved, shy.

A week or so later, she had a small birthday party and she got into an argument with her slightly younger brother, something about a CD he had taken of hers. She Stabbed him to death with a kitchen knife. I read about it in the paper.

She was not some psychopath that was feigning sociability and hiding her true desires. She was a kid who had been drinking and under whatever circumstances she had found herself in, she lost control, she snapped. And in those fractions of a second, her life had changed forever, as had the lives of her family and of course, the life she had taken.

The reports said that before her brother even fell to the ground, she was holding him, trying to save his life, apologizing. Things just can't be undone though, once broken, some things are unable to be repairable, no matter the will and want. She held him until the paramedics arrived and the police took her into custody.

What most fail to recognize is that we are all capable of such evils given the right set of circumstances and sometimes things align perfectly for lightning to strike and move our hands in ways that would normally be impossible. Unintentional harms, words let go in anger or blades thrust into flesh and blood that would otherwise be protected.

It is easy to pass judgement over the actions of others in these circumstances and say I would never but, placed in the same position, with the same mind, experience and skills, there is actually nothing else that could be done. Under pressures untrained and unimaginable, we do not know how we will react, we can only work under assumption.

We read about these things in the news, we empathize with the victims and their families but, do we put ourselves in the shoes of the perpetrator, do we dare? It is easy to say, but that is not me, I am incapable of such but, how could we actually know?

We all have our breaking points.

However, these pressures can also bring about the best in human behavior also. Another factor people dismiss. Under the heaviest of stresses is when we can shine and instead of unexpected evil arrives an accidental hero. We might even fantasize about how in a given situation our hero within would shine but again, how can one know without having experienced it?

There can be the finest of lines between hero and villain and only in the moment will one discover the role they will play.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]