forgiveness for a lost soul

Friday, April 20th, 2007
10 reasons to forgive Cho Seung-Hui

I have been trying to get my arms around this tragedy all week. I think this is the best I can do. So I now post this open letter to the misguided soul whose place in the world will forever be remembered by his inability to come to terms with it.

1. Your extreme show of violence is truly just a façade for how weak and powerless you really must have felt in life.
2. Your mental illness obviously warped your sense of right and wrong to such a point where you were cut off from society completely—trapped in the shell of your overpowering feelings of inadequacy.
3. No weapon renders the user ‘powerful.’ Power is from within. You acted out of a severe lack of it. Though it was there all the time—you were incapable of harnessing it. Your guns gave you only the illusion of power. A common misconception. A misconception that you alone, among those whose lives you cut short, took to your grave.
4. You failed to recognize the hope, help and friendship offered to you by those that reached out to answer the violent cries for love and help so evident in your writings.
5. What you want to be perceived as your moment of violent glory and infamy is in reality—only your cry for love and desire for acceptance in a world that you felt bitterly rejected you.
6. Your ‘heroes’ were as weak, helpless, hopeless and powerless as you. That you chose to identify with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold only further destines you to be remembered as one of those rejected, hapless, mentally distorted lost souls whose immense anger and self-loathing led them to a violent end. A sad crown to wear indeed.
7. Forgiveness empowers healing.
8. In the wake of your actions it’s obvious that you had hoped for a reaction of anger, hatred and sorrow. Instead, you are simply pitied. The sorrow is there, but with it comes forgiveness.
9. You have taken away lives, but you cannot take away the memories and the impact these individuals had on those around them. Even in death, the glory is theirs.
10. As one so lonely and unloved, you were willing to embrace hatred. You have not moved me to hate. The reality of your situation was out of your reach; so far from your perception—you were spiritually blind, deaf and dumb. Thus, I can only forgive you.