A Son’s Curse
48 hours ago I opened my news app. Aghast.
In the wake of the Bondi shootings, 15 innocent fatalities, including a 10 year old girl…all from a group of happy families celebrating their peaceful Jewish Hanukkah holiday. The gravitas of this happening on our Australian shores is immense.
Then I read on.
It was a 50 year old father and his 24 year old son behind the trigger. While the father was shot dead, the son is left to recover in hospital. He now has to deal with the fallout that would’ve begun with his father’s belief system passed down from one generation to the next.
It goes without saying, the heart wrenching feeling I have for the families of the victims is shared amongst (I’d like to think) most Australians…actually most humans on the planet. Especially those who have their own atrocities they’ve had to endure. The point of this expression is how this son, this once innocent boy became a damaged man.
I get it. At 24 he is an adult and has his own autonomy and will no doubt be dealt severe punishment for the crimes - as he should. But what this highlights for me is the effect fathers have on their sons. How impressionable young boys and young men are to the pressures, influence and expectations around them. How, for the yearning to belong to something, anything, will push them beyond moral decency. They will commit these terrors in the name of something bigger than themselves. And it isn’t just reserved for religious extremists which we often will (and rightly so) attribute to these types of acts.
The language and attitude we have as fathers is often adopted by our sons who look up to us. Whether they replicate out of fear of being abandoned and rejected, or they simply want to remain connected to the father figure, they will justify bad behaviour if they see, hear or feel their dad justifying bad behaviour. It’s all in our perception between good and evil and every shade in between. We can justify anything if we look hard enough. If we use the saturated false flag technique or re-interpret some old scripture or accept collateral damage is important for a bigger cause. This is the basis for every act of violence we know. Blaming something outside of ourselves for posing some perceived threat against our way of being. It’s twisted. Archaic. It does nothing but shed blood and perpetuate grief. There is nothing to be gained. Yet these young boys continue to follow in their father’s footsteps, believing they have the answer to some great manifestation of manhood.
It's up to the healthy men in our community to keep striving for something better. Be cautious of the language and behaviours you display around your sons or any young boy within eye or earshot. They’re looking for answers to life so it’s up to us to provide them with better choices. And the events on Bondi beach was an unfortunate and worldly concern than men out there are making destructive ones.
I hope and pray we have a higher percentage of healthy men emerging into the world. By pure numbers, it feels like the only way to sift out this torture, this ignorant and abhorred belief system that thou must kill in the name of a higher cause. To stand up as men, beside the oppressed and show unwavering love and support is to ensure that it becomes of part of history…exactly that. It stays in the past as it has no place in our tomorrow.
