So what's it like, suicide bomber?

   I find myself wondering quite often what it's like to wake up on the morning of the day which has been chosen for you to end your life, along with the lives of as many other people as you possibly can.
   Believing that heaven awaits you at the end of this task, I wonder if the air you breathe has already begun to smell a little sweeter and the food you taste just that much more delectable as you begin what you know are the final steps to this glorious outcome. I wonder if excitement broils in you.
   If there was a time when you doubted you could perform this task, how long ago was that and who or what intervened in such a way that you had now become fully resolute in your lives-ending mission?
   Does it feel as though you've become something more than a man? Do your insides pulse with what you can only imagine to be the sown seeds of divinity? 
   What is your ability to actually fail at your task? What if it just doesn't feel like a good day to die, or maybe even the right day? Are there do-overs, do you get to go back to your friends or associates and say something like sorry, guys, just having kind of an off day here but I'm gonna give her another go tomorrow? Or could it be that they will kill you, regardless, so why not aim for that heaven thing while you're at it?
   Are you allowed to say goodbye to anyone, apart from the group who has helped you along this path?
   What if you are in the exact spot you're meant to be in order to set the bomb off and all of the sudden your sister appears beside you? Or your uncle? Or an old school chum and what kind of small talk do you engage in with that old school chum anyway? Would there be any attempt to ward off these people, should they appear?
   The more I consider suicide bombers, the more questions I have.
   Occasionally you hear about the target being missed, the bomb seems to detonate accidentally and the only person who dies is the bomber himself. You almost want to cheer when this happens, one of those in your face, sucker kinds of moments. Is it possible, though, that some of these failed attempts might only be the end result of last-second changes of heart? Could it be that reason took over? Or maybe even a little bit of humanity? And, if so, how awful to know you simply cannot return where you came from without detonating a bomb, even if you are the only one who will die from it.
   Whatever the motivation, whatever the reasoning behind it all, there will continue to be instances of individuals insinuating themselves among crowds of people and letting death and destruction ensue. There will not be a plethora of pictures with this blog post. A quick search on the internet provided no suicide bomber pictures which were suitable to publish here---nothing but mayhem and body parts.
   Out of all of this, then, who ends up in heaven and who doesn't? My own personal belief is that anybody who dies ends up somewhere heaven-like. This would apply as much to the bomber as to the ones killed by him. Nobody knows, of course but what we do know is that there is this little bit of pointless hell left behind for the rest of us to deal with.
  
   
   

"In the jungle, the mighty jungle..."

   "The lion sleeps tonight".

   An American big game hunter goes to Africa and kills a famous lion. People find out about this and many end up wishing and calling for retribution on this big game hunter. 
   The retribution they demand is varied; some call for legal prosecution, some call for a brand of social shaming which will end his livelihood, some call for his torture and murder.
   In the midst of this, and a little bit after the initial revulsion has died down, some people begin to look at how the death of this lion fits into their view of the world around them.
   Most of us are aware, at least, that big game hunting goes on in many parts of the world, North America included. We may not be totally aware of the ins and outs of it---the regulations around it or the manner in which it is sometimes carried out. Lately, though, we have been getting a bit of an unsettling education.

A lion. Just not THE lion. Because it doesn't really matter.

   Our horror, in this case, revolves around what is perceived as the breaking of rules and the fact that this lion was only initially wounded and then suffered for almost two days before its demise. It was then beheaded and its carcass discarded. To top it all off, it was a famous and well-loved lion.
   What makes it seem even less savoury (if that is possible) is what I believe to be peoples' perception that this affair was perpetrated by a wealthy privileged white man in a third world country where he both felt impunity to its laws and total disregard for basic morality.
   The man and his family, of necessity, are now in hiding. After the details of this lion's death came out, an internet mob immediately formed and began directing its wrath at the man. Some of the ensuing invective was hard to read. In most cases, it was people simply venting their outrage. Given at least the vocal support of so many thousands of people, though, it is not hard to imagine a few among them who might feel vindicated by this support and then go about trying to seriously harm this man or his family. Hence their disappearance.
   In the last few days, there has been article after article and link after link regarding this lion's death. Some have been of the angry variety and others have taken a step back and attempted to look at the issue from different angles.
   One of these angles is that of conservation. It gets pointed out that big game hunting and the rules and regulations around it are there to promote the continued existence of big game. Were it not for hunting, the numbers of certain big game would exponentially explode, thereby destroying what is considered to be a fairly delicate balance in the ecosystem.
   Another angle I heard mentioned was that this episode seems to have stirred up much more anger here in North America than it did in Africa itself. Some African government officials, when contacted by the press for their reaction to the uproar around the death of this lion, were not even aware of it. In other places, it was pointed out that so many Africans are killed each year by wild animals such as lions, hippopotami, and crocodiles that the idea that one of them might have been killed by one of us was simply not that distressing.
   Other people pointed out that big game hunting helped the economy of wherever it took place. Hunting is obviously big business and brings in much needed money. It also was pointed out that the carcass and bones of the dead animal gets used by the local villagers as food and fertilizer.
   

If you really NEED to kill something,
why not do this instead?

The observation was also made that, given the advanced age of this particular lion, the natural death which awaited him was likely more horrific (to us) than the one he actually endured. As mature male lions weaken, the younger ones begin vying for the position of head of the herd. In the end, this involves continued physical attacks on the older lion which, eventually, kill it. Apparently, lions don't just trot off into the sunset at the end of their lives.
   Finally, it was noted in several places that we, as a nation of principally meat-eaters, were all too quick to condemn the death of one lion while at the same time enjoying the endless succession of steaks, burgers, and pork chops we fill ourselves with. At the same time we do this, we ignore the oft unspeakable things which happen to animals before they become our meals.
   Obviously there are many ways to look at the issue and many stands which can be taken.
   At the heart of it all, I wonder about the people who want to kill large animals.
   After all the reasoning and rationalizing are done, you are then left with someone who is more than willing to spend anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars so that they can bring down large and, essentially, defenseless animals. They do this in Africa, they do this out in the woods behind their own houses here in Canada and the States. They will use many of the above arguments in an attempt to rationalize hunting as a past-time but when it comes right down to it, they are people who like to kill animals and are willing to to sacrifice huge amounts of money and time so that they can kill animals.
   One of the observations I ran into the past week was rather poignant and telling. The point was made that when children, who are essentially immature, kill animals they are regarded as being potentially mentally disturbed. When adults, who are generally considered to be knowing and responsible, kill animals, however, they are considered skilled and daring! Why is this?
   At some point in our evolutionary history, it was necessary to hunt animals in order to survive. That some people still hunt, I imagine, is testament to the tiny parts of this instinct left over from those primitive days. It is no longer necessary to hunt for our meat, though, and it is unsettling that people still feel the need to kill. This may be the hypocritical me speaking, as I do enjoy meat as a food base. Long before a lion was killed in Africa, though, I was already having a difficult time coming to grips with what I was eating needing to be killed first. Is there a vegetarian me sometime in the future. Could be! If there is, I will often think of dead lions in Africa as I'm sitting down to every meal!    

   
     
   
   

Unthinkable

   Back on June 15, my ball hockey team lost in a hard fought battle. In the last few seconds of that game, one of our best players, Asa Johnson, became involved in an altercation with one of the opposing players, an altercation which got Asa and the other player tossed out of the tiny bit of the game remaining.
   We were clearing our stuff out of the players' bench and I noticed a wallet still lying there, unclaimed. I picked it up, saw Asa's name on the inside, and took it with me. I ran into Asa, who'd returned to retrieve it, by the boards. I gave him a look what I've got kind of smile as I waved it at him and he smiled and took it from me. At that point he headed off.

   That was the last time I ever saw him.
   This past week, a rather ominous post on our team Facebook feed announced that Asa was missing. Then, later that day, it became known that he had actually passed away. As a team, we were naturally in shock. Most of the players are young and in their twenties and all very vital and athletic. The last thing you suspect is that one of you might die.

Asa

   Although I never saw Asa again, he continued to appear on the team feed in the month before he passed, making comments and joking around. As a result of the altercation at the end of that game, he'd received a suspension and there was much talk on the feed about how long that suspension might be, when would his first game back be and could we possibly talk the league commissioner into letting him come back earlier, that sort of thing. Then the terrible news. To exacerbate the pain, it has come to light that his death was self-inflicted.
   I barely knew the young man. Ours was a brand new team pulled together at the beginning of this season and not a lot of the players were familiar with each other, only small pockets of friends here and there. What made it more difficult for me was that most of the guys on the team were of a different generation, young enough to be my sons. The boys were full of youthful and endless bravado, if nothing else. To a man my age, they all seemed indestructible.
   To me, the unthinkable had happened once again. It was just a few short years ago that one of the players on a team of mine passed away. That time, however, he was an older man in his late forties who had a heart attack in his car on the way home after a game we'd both played in. I had commented to him after that game that he looked pretty winded and out-of-sorts and he himself acknowledged that he didn't feel quite right. I still regret not forcing him to hang around the arena just a little longer until he either felt better or we got him some medical assistance. I wrote a blog post about that gentleman as well and, in an ironic twist, the same day I found out about Asa passing someone out there in cyberspace viewed the post I'd written on the other man.
   For the few brief moments I'd held Asa's wallet in my hand at the end of the last game he played (in which he was named the third star by the way) I noticed the difference between his wallet and my own. His was very thin and unencumbered by wads of cash, credit cards, receipts and appointment cards. His grown-up life had just begun and there had not yet been the opportunity to accrue all the little reminders of debt, meetings, purchases, interest and responsibility---all things of which my own wallet reminds me of daily. I think I almost subconsciously envied him as it passed back into his own hands.
   As I'm writing this, I have my headphones on and, in another moment of irony, the theme from the movie "Glory" has come on. It is a haunting piece of music which plays over a scene at the end of the movie wherein fallen warriors of the Union army are thrown into a mass grave after a pivotal Civil War battle. It is a haunting moment which reflects the loss of life of young men gone too soon. As I reflect on this, I remember it was written by a composer named James Horner, who also passed tragically this year, only a week after Asa's last game. None of this is lost on me.
   It will be difficult to sit in another dressing room someday, looking around, deeply, at all the young faces, and not think about Asa. I will wonder what their lives are all about when they're not on the ball hockey floor. I will also continue to wonder what kind of intervention, if any, might have prevented his death. It might have been something complex and almost unfathomable or, at the right time, it could have been something as simple as a word or two. As we pass though our daily lives, we would do well to remember that we all have that word or two in us and not be afraid to offer them up, perhaps even in the most unexpected places.