How Dare You Be Sad!
By NATHAN SMITH ‘19 and BENJAMIN SMITH ‘16
“If it bleeds, it leads.” So goes the adage about news reporting, and so we hear about suffering. Recall some recent tragedies: bombs in Sri Lanka killed over 300 churchgoers on Easter; Hamas beat and detained scores of c and journalists; a cyclone damaged crops and destroyed towns in southern Africa. None of these stories are positive, and yet, all command attention.
Naturally, the media covered the Notre Dame fire, too. I watched, sad to see a monument of human effort and a holy site to countless generations wither and combust. I felt even sadder to see the subsequent attacks on news organizations for their covering of the Notre Dame fire.
A University of Maryland student wrote in a student publication an article that collates many unsavory allegations about news coverage on the blaze. She begins, “[Notre Dame] is, at the end of the day, a building.” She continues, “It seems as though private donors are only willing to throw their financial support behind causes that are beneficial to white, European, Christian communities.”
In addition to misplacing modifiers, this author mischaracterizes Notre Dame. Notre Dame is not just any building. Construction began in 1160 and lasted over 100 years. The 13,000 trees in Notre Dame’s frame are so tall that they must have been up to 400 years old by 1160; thus, the roof beams that burned could have been taken from trees that started growing in 760. Milton Academy was founded over 1,000 years later. The stained glass windows, up to 62 feet in diameter, which depict bible scenes and reflect artistic genius, have no rival. There, Joan of Arc’s mother petitioned a papal delegation to pardon her daughter; there, kings and queens were married; there, French Presidents were eulogized. As a building, Notre Dame has served as the vessel for sweat, creativity, and memory for far longer than we can comprehend.
Moreover, Notre Dame appeals to more people than the “white, European, Christian communities” dreamt of in this writer’s philosophy. Besides the historical and architectural wonder that Notre Dame represents, it exists in the consciousness of many societies. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo’s 1825 novel that features Notre Dame, has been translated into numerous languages indigenous to places far from France. Pictures “representative” of Paris or France often show the structure. Notre Dame’s location does not mean that only white European Christians care about the cathedral. If a meteor struck the Taj Mahal, would only Indian people grieve? If an earthquake leveled the Great Wall of China, would only Chinese people lament? If geography delimited our capacity for empathy, extreme nationalism would beget endless war.
The author mentioned that a mosque in Jerusalem caught fire the same day. Groundskeepers said that young children had started the fire and that firefighters extinguished the flames seven minutes after the fire’s existence was reported. Nevertheless, the author insisted that this story merited equal weight in reporting. Why? Nothing was lost; there is no damage to repair. The only story is about the firefighters’ efficiency.
Although money spent restoring Notre Dame will neither free the press nor drain a flood, investing in Notre Dame serves deeper purposes: it affirms that we recognize a structure greater than ourselves. It comforts the people to whom Notre Dame is larger than life. Shaming people who care about Notre Dame is cruel.
The moral of this story about stories is that you do not need to justify why you mourn. You do not need to justify your feelings. Your feeling sad about one thing does not preclude your feeling sad about something else. Nobody wins a contest of suffering, and nobody wins when we treat a contest of suffering as a legitimate use of our mental energy.
Courtesy of Google Images