Thursday, September 30, 2010

Of Great Value

Tonight I spoke with a friend of mine from Chicago. He insisted, "If he's not physically attracted to you, then he must be gay." But I'm not so sure about that, I mean, I know he's not gay, but just because he's not gay, doesn't automatically mean that he'd be attracted to me. After all, I could be too tall, too brunette, too green-eyed, rather than blue, too, well, I won't expose my physical insecurities to the world, but just because my Chicago friend finds me to be attractive, doesn't mean that this other guy does. And even if he is physically attracted to me, I've learned that physical attraction and liking are two matters that are seemingly unrelated.

But back to the gay thing. This morning as I working in my cubicle in the Empire State Building, our Athletic Director stopped in and shared the tragic news of the death of a college student named Tyler. Tyler was a phenomenal musician who was attending Rutgers University, just across the Hudson River in New Jersey. While pursuing music and academics, Tyler was also pursuing a gay life style and his roommate thought it would be funny to expose this to the world by setting up a camera in their dorm room and posting on You Tube footage of Tyler being intimate with another man.

After the exposure and the humiliation, Tyler drove the the George Washington Bridge and ended his life by jumping off of it.

As a mainstream radio station (92.3) discussed this evening, there are two tragedies in what happened. The first is that the roommate thought destroying his roommate through public humiliation would be "funny." It's not funny - it's horrible and far from the basic respect that we ought to have for one another. But the other tragedy is that Tyler thought that what happened was so bad, that he couldn't continue living on. He had lost all hope. When in reality, everything we face in this world is temporary - and there isn't any situation (as horrible as it may be) that we can't move through and beyond.

Our lives are of great value. We must learn to value one another - regardless of how different someone might be, and we must learn how to value ourselves, even when our world seems to be falling part. We must believe that we are of great worth.

Just so you know, I think that you are of great worth and of great value. And by the way, God does too.

1 comment:

Micah Escamilla said...

thank you for writing this. xoxo