COMMENTARY: Is it possible to become somehow accustomed to these bloodbaths?
|
|
|
By Kaius Niemi
Has Finland already become inured to the sort of carnage we saw last week?
There was not time to ponder in any depth the question posed by a British journalist on New Year's Eve, while the newsroom struggled to get on top of a breaking story.
The shots had been fired in the Sello shopping mall only a matter of hours earlier.
Of course we have not become habituated or accustomed to this sort of thing. It is not something one can "get used to", I replied to the caller.
But the question posed by the British reporter did not go away when the call ended.
Is it possible after all that the subconscious works in furtive secret ways to do just this? To prime the mind to accept without thinking that the Espoo mass murder was just another event in the continuum. There have been these things before, there might be more of them ahead.
Wasn't it lucky that it didn't touch me this time...
On Saturday the doors of the Sello mall reopened.
People went shopping despite the tragedy that had occurred there 48 hours earlier, and many stopped to think of the families of the victims.
It is good that people went back into the shopping complex. A return to the normal everyday routines is a therapeutic signal of having won out over evil.
The same thing happened in London five years ago. After the suicide terror attacks on London's public transport system, the public resolved to continue their lives as normally as the circumstances allowed.
It was a better alternative to cowering in the corner at home and giving a spiritual victory to those who perpetrated the atrocities on July 7th.
A speedy return to normality is comforting, but in a country that has seen three mass killings in relatively quick succession - and a fourth in 2002 - there is also an inherent risk.
The tragedy in Espoo cannot be shrugged off and left untreated, and the work of grieving must be allowed to take its own time.
Finland must have the patience to stop and ask how the circle of violence can be brought to an end.
So that we do not become quietly accustomed to these things, without even realising it.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.1.2010
KAIUS NIEMI / Helsingin Sanomat
kaius.niemi@hs.fi
