Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

On a bright December morning in 2012, a lone gunman fired as many as 100 shots at a small New England elementary school. He took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults who woke up that morning thinking it would be just another day at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Countless others, of course, would be the collateral emotional damage that is always the case in tragedies like these.

Adults hid themselves and the children in closets, in cupboards, under desks, behind file cabinets. When it was over, police had to lead the surviving children past the carnage that was their now lifeless classmates and teachers. They told the children, “Close your eyes. Hold hands” as they ushered them to safety.

That’s a powerful image.

Close your eyes. Hold hands.

That’s pretty good advice. Perhaps it’s exactly what we need to do.

Perhaps it is the only way we can get through some of the tough and ugly problems that surround and threaten to overwhelms us.

There is, after all, a lot of ugliness around us. A lot of senseless but very real suffering. A lot of pain. A lot of injustice.

Close your eyes.

By this I don’t mean deny what is there. We can’t. It’s real. We know it exists. We close our eyes to move past it. To not be consumed by it. To have the strength to lead each other through it and beyond.

Hold hands.

We need each other to get through this. We can’t negotiate this cruel landscape alone.

In many ways, the individualistic focus of our Western society handicaps us from relying on each other in such a fundamental way.

More collectivist societies have, as their overarching goal, the good of the group as a whole. The well-being of the collective takes prevalence over the desires of any individual — in an “all for one and one for all” kind of mentality. And, in many ways it works. Very well, in fact. Although our western minds recoil at the thought of surrendering our precious independence. We see it as sacrifice.

In simple and absolute terms, Collectivist perspectives encourage cooperation and collaboration, where everyone contributes to the big win that will benefit all. It is the bedrock of their existence, the underlying force that guides behavior. Individualistic perspectives, in contrast, encourage competition, whereby we strive to be the single winner. It is dependent on others losing.

That’s not to say there isn’t cooperation and even altruism in our very individualistic society. Perhaps just not quite enough.

Take my hand?