Veterinarian missing after kicking horse in the head

[SillyHorse]

@skydy

You have to keep this going?

Seems you do.

[RhythmNCruise]

I keep thinking about this story.
I teach high school English. Over the past several weeks, two things have happened that are giving me some perspective on this tragic turn of events.

One, I taught Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. If anyone is familiar with the book, it’s the story of a proud Ibo man named Okonkwo during the beginning of the colonization of what is now Nigeria. Okonkwo isn’t a particularly likable man. He has a temper, he does some things the reader doesn’t like. But he’s also got a lot of insecurity due to the pressure on him to be successful and masculine. He has issues from his childhood that he cannot get past. Okonkwo kills himself at the end of the book because he realizes life as he knows it will no longer return. Christian missionaries have come to his village and things will never be the same. He kills one of the messengers of the missionaries and then leaves and hangs himself. The District Commissioner decides in his (very biased, racist, uninformed) book, he’ll dedicated ONE PARAGRAPH to “this man” who killed a messenger and then himself.

The point Achebe is making with the book, of course, is that those who tell the stories have the power to decide what the story is. The reader has just read an entire book about this character. A character whom we didn’t really LIKE, but with whom we sympathize in the end because we know ALL of his story, not just the final, violent moments of it.

The second thing that happened is that one of my students killed himself. He was found hanging in a city park.

For those of you who have no compassion for the man who took his life because he kicked a colt in the chin, I hope you can understand that no one is perfect, we all make mistakes, and the last thing we need to do is sit behind a computer screen and judge and condemn people when we DO NOT KNOW the whole story based on a few-second clip of video.

[Annie10]

@skydy

@SillyHorse

[Edit] The video is disturbing, to say the least. Maybe they will find that he is indeed at the bottom of Lake Mead. Not that I’d wish it on anyone, dear flagger

You did, but I can’t quote you because the Mod felt that your post violated the rules of civility here, and it did.

@Annie10

Ultimately his behavior was his choice and he alone, as was his choice to “unalive” himself. No one else’s.

He’s dead. Is that not enough attrition for either of you? Let it go. The whole thing is a tragedy.

Are you not satisfied yet? You have to keep this going? [Edit]

Well, pardon me. Unless I’m mistaken, it appears as though you are the one that posted after both of us, therefore, you would be the one that is “keeping it going”.
And I did not realize that you were the hall monitor of who can post what on COTH and where as well as when, but thank you so much for informing all of us.

[skydy]

I’ve posted once on this thread before this latter post, and that was over two weeks ago.

I’m not the one keeping it going.

[Annie10]

Right now you are