Remembrance

Everyone wants to be remembered. Everyone - no matter how meek or grandiose - everyone wants a legacy. Cho Seung Hui has a legacy now. He found a terrible way to be noticed. He - like so many young men before him - chose to end his life in an explosion of violence. And like so many young men before him, his explosion violently ended the lives of others. The tragic death of 33 people is, of course, not the end of the death toll at Virginia Tech. Parents, partners, and friends will die many more little deaths as this explosion of violence continues to expand - a mirror of the pain and despair of one man who wanted very much to be noticed.

We, the survivors, want very much to make sense of this. The simplest answer, the one we will reach for first because it seems so obvious, is that Cho Seung Hui was out of his mind. Crazy. A nutcase who went berserk. You will already note how the media paint him as suspicious. Now that the deed is done, many will come forward to say he was odd, he seemed twisted, they always suspected that he was nuts. More than likely this is hindsight. More than likely he was rarely noticed at all - a kid referred to as "question mark," a nuisance possibly. No one really believed he was dangerous.

The chances are very good that Cho Seung Hui did not suffer from a brain disorder. He was probably not schizophrenic, and although he was probably depressed, he was probably not a clinical depressive or bipolar. Statistically, people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Unfortunately, this fact makes us, the survivors, very uncomfortable. It is much easier to dismiss this man as a lunatic, than to consider what drives a sane person to such evil. It is much easier to think him crazy, than to think that another quiet, normal kid might suddenly decide that he needs a legacy, too.

Read more on mental illness and violence here.