I am the vice-chair of the residential unit of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local 48. I attend a meeting once a month to advocate for a very small contingent of residential journeymen (the term is asexual in this instance, although I think all of the residential unit is male). The union residential journeyman is a dying breed, forgotten about by the much larger Inside Journeyman representation (I think the numbers are something like 3800 to 45).
In March I went to the meeting and everything was normal. Steve, the guy that encouraged me to come to more meetings (telling me he liked my ideas and that they deserved more voice), always sat in the back. It was never any secret that he was dissatisfied with his lot in the union. He had been attending meetings for years and felt his voice was never heard. I was proud to sit among Steve and others like him and when they asked me to sit on the board I felt honored. Nevermind that pretty much everyone that shows up on a regular basis to this meeting is on the board. I still felt honored. We had formed a working friendship at these meetings and their ideas and voice inspired my own. I couldn't have spoken up without all of their support but especially Steve's. When I left that night I told Steve that I'd see him at the general membership meeting in two weeks.
Steve didn't show up to the general membership meeting which seemed a little weird but nothing to cause speculation or worry or anything. I showed up to the April residential meeting, eager to begin work on the next contract we are going to present to the contractors. Steve, Ryan(Board Chair) and I make-up the negotiating commitee. I showed up early and Tim (the organizer in charge of the residential unit) asked me if I thought anyone from Red's Electric would show up. I said I figured Steve would show up and probably Gus. His answer shook me a bit but not as much as the conditions under which the substance of his answer came to be.
"Steve's dead," he said. Of course I asked for clarification. It didn't make sense. He was in his forties. I had seen him 28 days earlier. He told me that Steve went camping with his 10 year old son and ran a hose from his exhaust pipe into the van. They were both found dead. You can read more here:
Father and son, 10, dead in apparent murder-suicide.
I can't forgive Steve for taking his son with him. I can't forgive him but I can still feel sad for him. I can't imagine getting low enough in life that this seems like a logical option. I never saw it coming. Nobody that I talked to did either. I didn't know Steve outside those meetings. I had actually looked forward to working with him. This event has shaken me a bit. I can't trust myself to trust people. My wife has always chided me that I am too trusting of people. She was and is right.
The problem isn't that I trust other peoples' judgement, however. The problem is that I don't trust my own judgement at all. When negative attributes of people reveal themselves I often personally discount those attributes in an effort to maintain my trust in the person. Sometimes I see myself as a martyr in that type of relationship. Other times I am just being opportunistic and feel that I have something to learn or gain from the person that I am defending. I have even gone so far as to defend people to the point of demonizing others who attempt to point out my lack of objectivity toward people that could poteltially cause harm to me or to those I love. I have even done this to my own wife, regrettably.
There are certain people that it would seem reasonable that I would trust. Unfortunately, it seems that many, if not most people have some sort of emotional damage. I believe that we live in a society that rewards certain effects of this emotional damage. I was raised to believe that sales was the way to make money. Being relatively poor growing up, I thought money would answer a lot of questions and solve a lot of problems. In my young adulthood that belief has kind of metastasized into a mentality that if the ends are financially beneficial enough then the means are justified, regardless of the emotional collateral damage. It is kind of an imitation of sociopathic behavior.
The messed up thing is that I have acted this way for so long that it is hard to change it. Sociopathic behavior is toxic to all of those close to the situation. The thing is I never got anywhere close to comfortable living this way. Even when this behavior paid off in some way, I always had the feeling that there was something coming and that I had to do whatever it took to make sure that it was a benefit to me. I've never experienced the cliche of living in the now. If you tell this to a corporate CEO he or she will tell you you are going places and to push through because "it" is eventually worth it. If you tell this to a therapist he or she will find a way to get you to tell yourself that what you are living is not life and that now is actually worth more than the mythical, eventual "it".
I can't help but wonder if, after 49 years of pushing through and rather than finding "it" he only found more pushing, Steve gave up. Steve had a support system available to him in the union, but I think he gave up on the union. I wonder if he had any friends. I wonder if anyone around him saw his pain. I wonder if anyone heard him when he spoke. A child, when ignored, will continue to raise the stakes of your choice to ignore them. Eventually your ignorance becomes just one of any number of injustices that the child feels victim of. We aren't so different than children. We just use bigger words and the consequences are far more tragic when the stakes get raised high enough.
No, I am not defending Steve. Just as I do for all human beings I hope he found peace when he died. But Steve is responsible for the murder of his son. Had Steve survived but his son didn't I would be advocating a lifetime of supervised rehabilitation (I don't believe in the death penalty). I am simply writing to point out that when we as a society encourage the ignorance of anger, sadness, rage and all other negative emotions, we do so at our own peril. Untended negative emotions breed fear and/or resentment. Fear and resentment affect what we see as logical. Once fear and resentment guides our logic we can determine that any number of actions are justifiable. Flying planes into buildings, strapping explosives to yourself and boarding a bus, gassing yourself and your kid, smiling at your boss while you rob them blind, pissing in the soup-of-the-day, even seemingly innocuous passive actions like diagnosing those that have negative emotions as borderline despite no formal training or qualifications(personal issue alert!) are all actions taken by scared or resentful people. Barak Obama touched on this in his
speech on race:
"But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding..."
Anger caused by fear and/or resentment left untended leads to actions that seem illogical to people who aren't aware of or who choose to ignore the threat that the angry, scared, or resentful person perceives. Ignorance and lack of awareness have the same effect to someone who feels threatened. The solution, it seems to me, is to encourage communication. Defenses come down when people believe that you are actually concerned for them and their emotions, regardless of how painful it is to recognize your own part in their emotional pain.
I never asked Steve about his family. I never knew he had a kid. I never had a beer with Steve. I never challenged Steve when I disagreed with him. But I regret that. I regret that I had no idea who this person was and yet I had visions of working with him on something beneficial to myself. I basically used him. I feel bad for that. I am sad that he is dead. I am sad for his son. I am sad for his son's mom. I don't know why I say these things. It just feels a little better to say them.
R.I.P. Steve and Shane
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