Be outraged while you still can be

Outrage isn't pretty.

It's uncomfortable to be around.

It sounds scary. 
It looks scary.

We avoid people who are outraged.

We should avoid people if we're outraged.

We sympathize, we have opinions, we shake our heads, we get mad and post things on Facebook.

But outrage?

Nobody likes outrage.

I can't remember when I felt it last, that powerless, blind fury.

Whenever it was, I'm sure I moved swiftly to dial it down before making any decision or taking any action that might be regrettable.

Because, it feels bad to be outraged.

It makes your head hot and flushes your face. 

It makes your thoughts swim and your hands tingle.

Your breathing changes, you feel like a stranger to your mild self.

But all I feel, still, over James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is outrage.

And, while I believe outrage must be disposed of properly

like toxic cleaning products

I wonder if I should be so quick to dial it down, this rage. 

It's not often that I feel politically emotional.
It's not often that I stop in the middle of what I'm doing to cry for strangers.

God help us if new events drain our capacity for outrage
When that sleep of tired anger and limp sadness settles over us.
And takes the wind out of our outrage 
God help us when we don't stop to cry for strangers.

And today, I hope our intellectually, culturally, socially, mentally, economically diverse population, with all our well-intentioned, outspoken, measured, powerful and mild, especially the mild, can come together to feel at least one thing about the murders of two journalists who absorbed this attack on all of us:

Outrage.

Until some action of magnitude happens, that wouldn't come about if not for that one thing first, outrage.

Outrage is the only response.