David McElroy

The murders of nine people at a Charleston, S.C., church this week were a tragedy, but I’m just as appalled by the reaction to the shootings as I am by the murders themselves.

Nine peaceful human beings were worshipping and praying at Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston. They were joined by a young man named Dylann Storm Roof, who sat among them for some time before pulling out a gun and murdering almost all of them. This story would already be a horrendous tragedy, but it’s been turned intensely political by the fact that the victims were black and the murderer is a white man who hates black people.

Nobody on any political side has anything to say that would solve the problem of racial hatred or bring back the dead victims, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to prove themselves right by turning this into an excuse to push their existing political agendas.

I’ve seen some conservatives try to turn this into an argument in favor of having more people armed. Those people say that if the victims had armed themselves at their prayer meeting, someone would have pulled out a gun and shot Roof. I’ve also seen some conservatives who say that racism wasn’t an issue in the shootings, despite the fact that the murderer has made it very clear he hates black people and wants to start a race war.

I’ve seen some progressives try to turn this into a debate over the Confederate battle flag. Those people apparently believe that if that old symbol of the South didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be racists and the murders wouldn’t have happened. I’ve seen others — including both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — use the murders as an excuse to push their existing anti-gun agenda, apparently forgetting that those who want to murder people doesn’t necessarily need guns.

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It’s hard for me to explain “the voice” to anyone, but it’s constantly there.

I’m driving into a parking lot to go to a bookstore. There are half a dozen different routes through the parking lot and I randomly choose one. The harsh voice screams at me.

“You should have turned at the other entrance. You’re wasting time. What’s wrong with you?”

I’m sitting alone in my own home and I have my legs propped up on my own coffee table.

“What are you doing with your feet on the furniture?” the voice snaps in anger, as though to a child.

I’m exhausted and don’t feel like doing anything this particular morning, so I sleep late. But I have trouble sleeping, because the voice is yelling at me.

“Why are you so lazy?” the voice shouts. “I’m disgusted with you. Get up. You are lazy.”

In big ways and small ways, the voice is with me much of the time. When I eat poorly and I’m “self-medicating” with sugar, the voice attacks me. It viciously points out the weight I’m gaining. It reminds me that no one likes a fat man. It reminds me that a woman isn’t going to love me like this, because fat people are disgusting and embarrassing.

The harsh and critical superego inside my head is always there. It’s always telling me that I’m a failure. It’s always telling me that I could do so much more with my life if I would just fix everything about myself. There’s always “one correct way” to the voice. Unless I do things in that one way, I am a failure.

That harsh voice constantly reminds me that I’m not OK — that I’m not good enough.

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Let’s say there’s something you need and want badly. It’s something you’ve spent half your life trying to find, because the lack of this thing has kept you from being happy. Now let’s say you’ve found what you’ve been looking for. It’s in a box in the next room. You’ve examined it and determined that it’s what you need. What do you do next?

If you’re like most people — and that thing in the box you need is love — you start inventing reasons to walk away without the box. And then you leave it behind, relieved that you made the right decision before you were stuck with what was in that box.

I’d say this is precisely what most of us do at one point or another. And though many end up being thankful about the decision to walk away, many others look at themselves quizzically and wonder, “What was I thinking when I walked away from that?”

I think most people today are desperate for love. I think it’s what we need and want more than anything else in our lives. Sure, we’d all like to have more money or more success or more power at work. Or some other random thing. But I think we pursue many of those things as substitutes for the love that’s missing from our lives.

Researcher Brené Brown has studied connection and vulnerability between people and has come to a simple conclusion about love. In her lecture series called “The Power of Vulnerability,” she was emphatic about what she has learned about what people need.

“…Love and belonging are irreducible needs of men, women and children,” Brown said. “I will go on the record as saying, in the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering. Period.”

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