One year ago I floated toward the sights and sounds of Pride
Festival on a cloud of kitten-shaped rainbows just given to me by the Supreme
Court. Their decision in Obergefell v.
Hodges stated in legal terms that same-sex couples have the right to marry
while shouting in human terms that all love is equal. Electricity and the air
at Pride were indistinguishable. I did not represent an L or G or B or T or Q
or ally—we were all one people, bound by Love, and gleefully celebrated this
moment in history when Love won. But that was last year. This year, I spent the
morning before Pride searching for my rainbow sweatband and wondering if I
should carry a knife in my pocket.
My pocket knife typically requires several moments of
forearm-deep digging in my purse to excavate, which is not convenient should
there be a crisis that required an immediate response with sharpened steel. I
keep it in my purse because I watch too many survival shows and zombie shows
and sometimes it truly comes in handy, like when a twig must be sharpened to
spear a marshmallow and on Christmas morning when presents are restrained with
impossible knots. The only time I carry the knife in my front pocket is when I
think I am at greater risk of dying.
What happened at Pulse in Orlando could happen anywhere, I
repeated to myself, resuming the argument between my head, heart, and gut,
whether to carry a weapon with me or not. This decision weighed far more than
the three-inch blade, even though it was a decision I had made several times
before. I carry my knife in my pocket whenever I hike or am alone in a parking
garage, without pausing for second thought, without having to calibrate the
scales of my conscience.
My heart said that a weapon is a physical representation of
readiness to act nobly in the face of fear. That defending life, my own or
someone else, even if I used a lethal weapon to do so, was brave and
honorable. Responding to danger with courage has been a virtue coveted since
the birth of human culture.
Then my heart proclaimed with Shakespearean flair, “I want
to be virtuous!”
But to say bravery exists only in the presence of weapons is
untrue. Appearing defenseless before an enemy and calling for peace feels more
honorable. A profound respect for life is shown when reaching for someone’s
heart with compassion instead of stabbing it. Even if the outcome is death for
the peace seeker. Self-sacrifice, in service of what one believes is the
greater good, is widely considered a sacred act. Is this the same self-sacrifice
that ISIS murderers seek?
Survival instinct always surpasses the heart’s craving to do
what feels right. The decision for my gut was simple: Carry the knife in your
hand! You can count only on yourself for protection! Better to be safe than
sorry!
My head then mocked, “Lolllll! You think a knife shorter
than your finger will keep you safe?!”
My head said if guns were feathers, the people of Kentucky could dress an entire species
of birds. The logic seemed obvious: vast accessibility to weapons amplifies the
opportunity for an ill-intentioned person to possess such a weapon, providing
them with tools to inflict maximum harm. Therefore gunshots were a tangible
possibility in Lexington, Kentucky, the host of the Pride Festival I would
eventually attend once I made up my mind.
A mass shooting, a hate crime, a terrorist attack, could
happen anywhere. I thought about the
other cities in the United States celebrating Pride that day—Cincinnati, Bend,
Flagstaff, Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, to name a few—what were the odds
of something bad happening at this
festival on this day? Chances were
nothing would happen here.
Although my head loves to rely on the numbers game to
extinguish anxieties, I know there exists a day for the exception and not the
rule. And if today was the day social media would be overcome with hashtag
prayer requests for my city, I needed to have my mind made up—should I carry a
knife in my pocket?
My feet came to a sudden stop as I identified the root of my
inner conflict with one word: Fear.
If the goal of a terrorist is to inflict terror, then they
had defeated me.
It isn’t unusual for scenes of horror to flash across my
imagination when I enter a movie theater, school building, church, or a large
crowd, like one gathered at the end of a marathon race, wondering what I would
do if it happened to me. Fear of mass shootings, suicide bombings—so far they
haven’t stopped me from living my life but they have influenced the habits of
my life. The dilemma to carry the knife was not the cause of my fear, but one
of its symptoms.
How does one eliminate fear? I considered two options:
1. Deny fear completely, which is impossible. Fear is a
basic motivator. Just ask Ron Swanson. Fear has a well-established role in
human life and cannot merely be ignored if it is to be conquered.
2. Replace one fear with an even bigger fear. It’s like fearing the ocean and being forced to swim in it. Once someone screams, “Shark!”
the fear of the ocean is suddenly replaced with fear of the shark.
So I need a shark.
What I fear more than being attacked is losing my humanity.
I fear losing compassion. I reminded myself to live in the present moment, to
enjoy friends, to love, to stand tall with my queer family, feel the
electricity of the community once again. To empathize with murderers I picture
them as the children they were (some still are), the houses they grew up in, societies
that shaped them. Then it’s easier to find how cause created the effect. It’s a
science of the heart, which isn’t perfect, but I find it the most satisfying
when trying to understand why people do the things they do.
I entered Pride with my knife buried inconveniently in my
purse, to appease the always be prepared
department of my generalized anxiety instead of the three-inch knife will protect me during any crisis variety. Once I
crossed beyond the first row of vendors and saw a couple draped together in a
rainbow flag, laugh and then kiss, all thoughts about my knife evaporated.

As I rummaged around my purse to untangle my phone charger I
realized that my knife was missing. After some searching I found it had been at
home all along, still in my hiking backpack from the week before.
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