In Susan Vreeland’s collection of short stories “Life Studies” there is one story entitled, “Respond,” I don’t want to give away the story here because the whole collection is worth reading, but part of the lesson in this particular story has to do with our response or lack of response and how we can get lost in the things that weigh us down to the point that those are the only things we can still respond to. It’s more complicated than that and is focused as much on relationship as anything else, but it came to mind today as it relates to so many other responses we have. It’s easy to point to Pavlov and his dogs as we try to explain our conditioned responses to things, but often there is more to them than salivating to the ring of a bell. There is a case in California where the video game industry is fighting against a law banning the sale of video games with violent or sexually explicit content. I don’t really want to get into the free speech freedom of expression thing. Anyway I was more interested in the studies about how these games desensitize people to violence or go even further and actually make people more violent. I remember about ten years ago a study on violence caused by song lyrics which talked about killing cops and other things. I guess I just have to wonder when we stopped learning to think and became so influenced by even the unrelated that we are conditioned to act out against our better judgement (or I suppose the point is that we no longer have our better judgement). This wasn’t where i was initially going with this, but my overall point is, “what happened to the thoughtful response?” instead of thinking through things we have already had our responses ingrained in us to certain things, so if it is like that thing, we respond accordingly regardless of what’s really going on or the chance that it might be different. To not respond is a response, and can even be the most thoughtful one. I guess I am hoping we can break free from whatever it is that constrains us, what distracts us, what seems like we are supposed to do, and actually respond to the world with deep care and thought. I hope this whether we are responding to the tragedy of war or some global disaster, or the sometimes nearly equal disaster of a child’s skinned knee. I hope we don’t just respond, but rather we make a response.