As she leaves Belfast to return to the US, Elizabeth Charash reflects on her time here, and on issues that both societies continue to wrestle with.

It was not until reading a self-care article for young researchers by Kimberly Theidon that the lessons from my time in Belfast became clear —“Even in the midst of violence; life is not only tragic.” As I pack up my last suitcase, attempting to cram in just one more New Look jumpsuit and book on gun violence, this quote replays in my head.

My reason for coming to Belfast was to learn about the violence. To learn how it started, who continued it, and why they did so. I wanted to become an expert in the violence of conflict, hoping that it would inform my work to address the gun violence that took place in most all of my communities back home. What I was largely ignoring, however, in this initial fascination, were the very people of the conflict who continued to live in spite of the violence.

Our brain is wired to focus on the negative and the hurt. Such wiring shapes the way we talk about world events among friends and across our media, and the way we even talk about our own lives. We want a story. We want something sensationalized that will shock and impress those who have not yet heard the more nuanced truths. In doing so, the lives of people affected by conflict become reduced to just the tragedy.

I worked with a group of young women in West Belfast who are the most intelligent, compassionate and resilient people I have ever met. When we first met they would talk about how everyone else saw them — these seemingly mythological figures who didn’t see the same wit, power and presence we were graced with each Wednesday night. There was a stigma attached to them because of a postcode outside of their control, inhibiting their ability to recognize their own courage and bravery, as a result.

What was most interesting, however, was that those who knew them best (their other friends in the group) saw the intelligence, compassion and resilience, wit, power and presence the outsiders who ignored their complexities did not. They commended each other for it — calling on one another to rise above the negativity and embrace themselves fully. They have taught me the importance of space and securing your place in a world that does not welcome your differences in the same way as your friends.

When leaving girls group one night with my fellow mentor, we passed by a man about my age on the edge of city centre. He was being supported by two men on either side of his limp body, his face badly bloodied – we weren’t sure exactly how, but in the moment that wasn’t important. A floodlight illuminated him, seeming to point out to the world that his life mattered, too. He had friends, too. He, too, had a space in a world that clearly did not seem to welcome him in the same way as his friends who brought him to safety. Life is not only tragic.

I soon arrived back at my apartment, only a five-minute walk from where this man was and a 15-minute walk from where our girls group met. Shaken by the night’s rollercoaster of emotions, I was supported by my friends, too. The significance of my life was affirmed, too. I, too, had a space.

“Even in the midst of violence, life is not only tragic.” Violence is complex, but it is only one component of life. It is not determinative of a person or of a place or of a being, even if that is its reputation.

Heading back to my own country, where gun violence seems unending, I hold the truth of this quote closely. We are too quick to simplify the events of the past and present in attempts at achieving some kind of future. In doing so we ignore the trauma and the complexities of the lives that have continued past the initial acts of violence.

The two — life and violence — are not distinct. We cannot examine them as mutually exclusive categories that will never touch. It is these intersections that we must seek to understand and incorporate into the way we discuss violence prevention, whether from the gun violence epidemic in America or the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

We need to focus on the people of the conflict in the same way we focus on the violence of the conflict. Life is not only tragic.

 

Read Elizabeth’s previous articles for Northern Slant here:

Sandy Hook Six Years On: What Has Changed?

What Does The New US Congress Mean For Gun Control?