Left to Tell

This last week I read an amazing book that I have not been able to shake from my mind. It is called "Left to Tell" by Immaculee Ilibagiza. It is the true story of a woman who lives through the Rwandan Holocaust and finds it in her heart to forgive the people who slaughtered her people and brutally murdered her family. http://www.lefttotell.com/

This book made me ugly cry...a lot. I tried to compose myself but I couldn't uncrumple my face or slow my gasping sobs. I cried for her, I cried for her family, for the Tutsis, for the lost childhoods on both sides, for the hatred that grew so easily, for humankind and how easily everyday people can become monsters. I would like to say I have stopped crying (since it has been 4 days since I read the end of the book) but I haven't.

Who am I? Am I the kind of person who could kill my neighbor given such circumstances? Am I the person who would survive but have hatred in my heart? Could I, like Immaculee, forgive after I knew the horror of my family's last breaths? Would I die, facing my attackers with courage and even poise while facing a horrific death?

I don't know if I could forgive. I wish I could say that I could.

Since going to college, in many of my classes we have touched on the subject of everyday people becoming monsters when the right situation arose. College students who continued to press the button that they believed shocked a person in a neighboring room even though they heard shrieks of pain, cries for mercy, and eventually silence because an authority figure told them to. Studies with college students who were made "prison officers" of other college students who were playing the part of "prisoners" that had to be cut short because it began to have scary similarities to Guantanamo Bay after 2 weeks. And so many more. And now this book where people kill their neighbors and friends...why?, because they are of a different tribe, because they are scared, because their government told them to, because they listened to enough evil that they began to become evil themselves?

I said it in class and I say it now. I will not be a follower who blindly does what I am told. I have a brain and it is a pretty good one. I will use it. I will find courage to stand up for what I believe even when it is an unpopular belief. I may not be as strong as Immaculee, I may not be able to forgive the way she did, but I can remember what following blindly can do and I can find the courage to know when to go against what I am told.