Maturing of the Human Soul

On May 25, 2020, the world shifted as millions witnessed the horrifying moments when a police officer pressed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes. We weren’t the same after that—it was vicarious trauma.

Also, in 2020, that same year, guns were the leading cause of death of children and teens. U.S. gun sales have doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic, from 1 million on average per month to 2 million on average per month in 2020.[1] The U.S. is an outlier in gun violence and deaths compared to other countries.[2] And in 2021, more Americans died of gun-related injuries than in any other year on record—and the majority are suicides as opposed to gun-related murders.

How does the killing of George Floyd influence the well-being of the community at large? Communal tragedies and bereavement, a torn social fabric, and eroding trust in our institutions are real factors in our lives. Just as natural disasters and terror attacks affect us collectively, so do events like the police killing of George Floyd.

One study looked at sadness across race and ethnicity. Black people are more likely to experience vicarious racism and compared to white people Black people have reported more negative police contact or hearing or witnessing events from other Black friends and family. Black people reported more poor mental health, depression, and anxiety.

Also, Hispanic individuals are also exposed to a similar risk of police violence as Black individuals, which also contributes to poorer mental distress in Hispanic/Latina communities. [3]

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” [4] We are all affected.

King went to jail 29 times for his acts of civil disobedience. Russian novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, spent 12 years in a Russian gulag. Spending twelve years in a Russian labor camp will produce something in a person. It will either be character or bitterness. But there will be a result. Here’s what Solzhenitsyn wrote: “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying on the rotting prison floor I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we have been told, but rather the maturing of the human soul.”

And King wrote:
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”

What can be done about police brutality, gun violence, systemic injustice, and racial profiling? Just reading and researching these stories is depressing. This is what pierces me: the call to love. The refusal to hate. The triumph of hope over despair. But humanity—while we are grieved over the worst of it—we are encouraged by the best of it. “The maturing of the human soul.” We continue and press on because we know humans possess the capacity and potentiality of the opposite of hatred. Change is not impossible, though it may be interminably long. It means keeping our eyes on the long haul and the inner work of the soul.