David McElroy

I don’t know how to make angry jihadis suddenly quit hating westerners and wanting to kill us. I don’t know how to stop everyone from doing evil things. I don’t know the perfect response to the attacks in Paris Friday.

But I have a pretty good idea that “bomb them back to the Stone Age” isn’t going to work.

After a bloody attack such as the one in Paris, the first instinct is retaliation. That seems to be human nature. The French have already sent tons and tons of bombs to blow up rocks and sand in the desert city which is considered to be the capital of the Islamic State. (Some western politicians say we should call the group Daesh instead, but I’m not going to get into that naming controversy.)

Dropping bombs on remote desert cities is popular with scared and angry voters — whether they’re French or American — but even if you kill the right people, you’re playing whack-a-mole. As you kill certain leaders and fighters, new ones emerge to take their place. (It’s a lot like the War on Drugs in that respect.)

When terrorists attacked this country on Sept. 11, 2001, there was a cry for blood, too. Soon afterward, George W. Bush sent U.S. troops to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the government there, because it had given sanctuary to the training camps used by terrorist groups. Shortly after that, he also invaded Iraq, even though Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on the United States.

How has all that worked for us?

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If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, “Playing it safe isn’t good enough; I have to try things that might fail,” you might want to read that first.

I don’t belong on this earth.

All my life, I’ve felt as though I was dropped off on the wrong planet, because I feel like an alien here. I feel as though I don’t belong. In fact, I feel most alone when I’m in groups of people, because it reminds me how different I feel.

In the most basic of ways, I lack connection with the vast majority of people. That leaves me feeling isolated, alone and frustrated.

As I go through life, I sometimes feel like questioning my sanity, because I see things in the world and in people and in relationships that other people seem not to notice — almost as though there’s an unspoken agreement to ignore certain things.

I feel like the little boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I feel as though almost everybody is pretending not to notice things which seem painfully obvious to me. But then I start wondering whether I really see what I think I see. Am I the one who’s imagining things?

When I try to tell others what I see, there’s mostly a shrug of indifference or else they look away as though I’ve mentioned something that’s impolite to mention. And that lack of interest from almost everyone else makes me certain that I’m an alien.

There’s something about this place — and these people — that I don’t understand.

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Nightmares always end, but when you’re in the middle of one, it seems as though it might last forever.

Last year was terrible for me. For several years, I’d been letting myself slide into a very deep hole. I was depressed. I was broke. I was alone. I was confused.

It was a nightmare that felt as though it would never end. In fact, I didn’t just slide into that deep hole. I fell into the hole and kept digging it deeper and deeper. It seemed as though nothing I could do was right. For the first time in my life, everything felt bleak and hopeless.

But I’ve finally dug my way out of the hole, even though I’ve not really recovered entirely. I’m not where I want to be in life. I don’t have the love or family I need. I haven’t achieved the things I want to achieve. I haven’t become the person I feel driven to become.

I sometimes complain about the things in my life that I’m still unhappy about, but then I see things in the lives of people I care about — and my troubles don’t seem as big as they had seemed before.

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