Tag: closure

Open-Ended

Who Shot J.R.?

The question reverberated across America in the summer of 1980.

This was the heyday of network television. There was no tangle of cable and streaming platforms to compete for entertainment attention. There was no Internet or social media for instant virality.

If there was a prime-time program on ABC, CBS, or NBC, a good portion of the country’s households were tuning into it. And in early 1980, the TV show Dallas was captivating the nation’s attention.

The show about the oil-rich Ewing family was certainly dramatic. Episodes featured everything from backstabbing business deals to brazen infidelity to caricatures of Texan glamour. But the intrigue rose to a new level during the show’s third season, when an unknown assailant shot the show’s antagonist J.R. Ewing.

The season ended immediately after the shooting. The setup gave the audience half a year to wonder if J.R. would survive — and who pulled the trigger.

It was the ultimate cliffhanger. One that helped Dallas soar into the cultural stratosphere.

Yet, Who Shot J.R.? was far from a harmless plot twist. It was a master class in exploiting a key emotional weakness. One that we’re still struggling to counter, decades later.

Back when I worked in the media, I would write short news scripts for the anchors to read.

On any given newscast, there would be 12 to 20 of these scripts, featuring subjects that we hadn’t sent a reporter to cover in depth. And many of them followed The Formula.

The Formula was the protocol for reporting on developing news. In rapid succession, the script would mention what our crews knew about the event, what we didn’t know, and what we were working to get more information on.

I viewed The Formula as a necessary evil. A public progress report was never ideal, but it was still better than withholding the story entirely.

The occurrences we reported on impacted our viewers, and we competed with two other stations to share them. We’d lose the trust of the local community — and our raison d’etre — if we want radio silent until we had the full picture.

Yet, we couldn’t speculate or embellish while filling in the blanks. If we did, we’d get in legal trouble.

The Formula treaded an uneasy middle ground between these outcomes. And so, I begrudgingly threaded that needle — knowing full well that it would irritate our viewers.

You see, humans crave closure. We don’t want things to be open-ended. We want all the information as soon as possible.

Not knowing who shot J.R. — or what will happen to him — eats at us. So does ambiguity surrounding a shooting, car crash, or brush fire in our local area.

Certainty provides the best closure. But it’s often made unavailable to us.

Sometimes, this is by necessity. Police and firefighters are scrambling to make it to the scene. The ambulance is still en route to the hospital. This is what I was contending with in my news media role, and it’s why I had to leave things open-ended.

But other times, certainty is willfully withdrawn. A situation is intentionally kept open-ended, with the understanding that the ambiguity will force us into action.

Mentally, we cannot leave loose ends untied. We’re just not wired for it. So, we do what we can to fill the gap — making a move that benefits those who fed us the partial information.

This might be watching the next episode of a TV show or buying a product in a panic. In any case, the closure hawker reaps the rewards of our Pavolvian response.

Such practices can be lucrative for these proprietors. But they’re fundamentally unjust.

And it’s time to stop turning a blind eye to that point.

I sat in the exam room, waiting for the gastroenterologist.

My appointment had been set for 2 PM. But now, it was pushing 4, and I was getting antsy.

The appointment was supposed to be nothing major. A basic follow-up for an endoscopy.

But with each passing moment, doubt gripped tighter and tighter like a boa constrictor.

Was the doctor just exceptionally bad at time management? Or was there something in my results that required another look? And what would that mean for me?

Finally, the gastroenterologist entered the room. He pulled up my file on his computer, read the report quickly, and informed me I had nothing to worry about. Everything was fine and I didn’t need a follow-up appointment.

This should have been music to my ears. But on the drive back to the office, I was irate.

What nerve did this man have holding me hostage for two hours — in the middle of a workday, no less — to tell me…nothing? And if I was fine, what explained the occasional flare-ups that had me stumbling to the kitchen at 2 AM to chug Alka Seltzer? Some of those had happened between the endoscopy and this farce of an appointment. Would I ever be able to connect the dots?

To that end, what of the original problem I came in for some years back? That also spurred an endoscopy, which did not come back clean. Back then, the gastroenterologist stated that he found something in my stomach and removed it. But what was it? Had I been close to dying without that intervention? And what were the odds of it coming back?

This experience illustrates the quandary of medical care.

To treat our maladies, doctor’s must diagnose them. And that often means reconciling what they see with what we feel.

The tests — the labs, imaging, scopes, and biopsies — tell all. They indicate what, if anything, needs to be remedied — leaving doctors to chart the course to cure. The tests provide closure to our open-ended health dilemmas – one way or another.

At least that’s the intent.

But reality is quite different. Our bodies are volatile, and our issues be elusive — disappearing at the time of a blood draw or scan, only to re-emerge when a doctor is not looking.

Indeed, certainty is a much rarer commodity than doctors would have us believe. That’s why my family didn’t post a Mission Accomplished banner when my grandmother’s cancer went into remission. Instead, we crossed our fingers every day for the next 16 years, hoping the disease wouldn’t come back. Frankly, it’s a miracle that didn’t.

So, I’ve paid little heed to the gastroenterologist’s reassurance about my endoscopy. I wait each day for the other shoe to drop, in the form of another flare-up. This outcome would not be pleasant, but perhaps it would provide some actual closure.

I’ve started taking this approach with all my medical adventures now. If I get an MRI or an X-Ray, I hope that it does find something — no matter how devastating the consequences. When I meet with various specialists, I do more than state which part of my body is hurting. I make a full case for an ailment diagnosis, leaving it to them to disprove it.

This is all irrational behavior. Kooky, really. And the fact that I continue to pursue it shows just how distressing ambiguity is. To me. To all of us.

So, why do we let others gleefully hold it over our heads? Why do we let them manipulate us like marionettes? Why do we let them exploit our emotions for their own gain?

We must do better.

It’s time that we, as a society, put the clamps on open-endedness. That we stop using it as a weapon for gain, and instead treat it as a tool of last resort.

This means changes to the way we write, the way we market, and the way we engage with each other.

It will be a jarring shift, sure. But we’ll be better for it.

There was a time when the question Who Shot J.R.? mattered. May there be a time when the question Why Weren’t We Told Promptly? matters more.

Darkness In The Light

“I’m going to die.”

The thought raced through my head, over and over like the words on an electronic marquee board, as I sat on the gym floor. I stared blankly out the windows illuminated by bright sunshine, resigned to my fate. All around me, my classmates stared intently, as the faculty leaders told us that we were safe.

“That’s bullshit,” I thought. “Stop lying to us.”

Still, I stayed silent. It wasn’t my place to say a word; even if it were, what would I say?

Soon, it was back to the school day. I wandered to my next class, my body climbing the staircase but my soul halfway to the other side. Moments later, my teacher told us to call our parents and tell them that we were okay.

Still in a daze, I turned on my phone and called my mother. On the second ring, she answered, sounding worried. I told her what I had just heard, but didn’t believe — that I was alright and we were all safe. My mother told me she was glad to hear that, the palpable emotion in her voice knocking me back into reality.

As the shock wore off, I was hit with an avalanche of emotions I’d never experienced before, feelings that I’ll never be able to adequately put into words. At the age of 13, my life had changed; I was broken, and would never be whole again.

The date was September 11th, 2001.

***

It started as a normal Tuesday. It had rained the night before, but as I started my hour-long journey from the New York suburbs to my middle school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — a trek that included a bus and two trains — the skies were clear and the air was warm. It was the kind of day that made a teenager long for the recently departed summer break; one you wanted to hold on to before the biting chill of fall set in.

As I sat in my history class an hour or so later, I was momentarily distracted by the sound of an airplane overhead — an unusual, but not unheard of occurrence. A few minutes later, it was on to a Physical Education class, and we headed out to Central Park to play soccer in the beautiful weather. As far as school days went, this one didn’t seem so bad.

But as we left the park, I could tell something was wrong. The streets were nearly empty; only a few people were on the move. A woman approached our gym teacher, who was nearly twice her height. The teacher leaned over as she whispered something to him; when he turned away he looked pale. I knew this teacher relatively well; he was also one of my baseball coaches and a pillar of positive energy. I’d never seen him so shaken.

That’s when I learned the horrifying news: The plane I’d heard flying over the school an hour earlier had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, just 7 miles south of where I was standing. Moments later, I learned that another plane had hit the south tower. It was apparent that the city was under attack, and doomsday scenarios sprung into the forefront of my mind; even with so much still unknown, I was convinced whoever was responsible wouldn’t stop until they burned down the entire city. There was nothing I could do to avoid the inevitable.

As the entire school gathered in the gym for an impromptu assembly, I was convinced this day would be my last on Earth.

***

After I got off the phone with my mother, and returned to my English class, I gained some clarity. We learned that terrorists had hijacked commercial airliners and intentionally flew the planes into New York’s tallest buildings. Other terrorists had flown a plane into the Pentagon, and there were a few reports of a plane crash in rural Pennsylvania. New York’s public transit system shut down, and the National Guard quickly blocked all the bridges and tunnels around Manhattan. I had nowhere else to go.

Two hours later, my father picked me up. He was teaching at another school a few blocks away at the time of the attacks, but he had to stay there until the parents of his students came to collect their kids.

When my father showed up at my school, I didn’t want to leave. I had finally realized that I was indeed safe at school. Who knew what would happen if I left? But there I was, moments later, walking down empty Manhattan sidewalks, hardly saying a word. Soon, my father and I were heading back to the suburbs in a car driven by his colleague’s mother.

As the car approached a toll bridge at the top of Manhattan, a heavily armed National Guardsman stood by the tollbooth. “Go on,” he said. “Get out of here.” It seemed like something out of a movie, and it gave me chills.

Around 1:30 that afternoon, my father and I met up with my mother and sister in the Bronx, at what would later be my high school. We took the short drive home and turned on CNN. For hours, I watched Aaron Brown give the latest developments on America’s darkest day, his voice weighted by somberness and mounting exhaustion. Eventually, my parents and sister went to bed. I stayed awake, worried that I wouldn’t wake up the next morning — and worried about what would happen if I did. Eventually, exhaustion took over; I shut off the TV and crawled into bed.

***

September 12th, 2001

I awoke confused, angry, disturbed and hurt. School was cancelled for the day, giving me plenty of time to think. So much was unknown, but one thing was abundantly clear: My life would never be the same again.

***

September 21st, 2001

Within a week of the attacks, the authorities reopened some of the sidewalks of Lower Manhattan. My father and I wanted to get a firsthand sense of what had happened, so we took a train to Chinatown (where the police barricades were) and walked a mile down Broadway to Ground Zero.

There was no way to prepare for what we saw next. A plume of debris filled the air, and the wreckage was six stories high. My father touched a scaffold three blocks from the World Trade Center and discovered the dust stuck to it was an inch thick. It looked like a war zone.

Soon, horror gave way to disgust. As we made our way down Broadway, I saw Don King standing on the other side of the police barricade. He was wearing an expensive jacket adorned with the Statue of Liberty and promoting his next fight. It was selfish, callous and rude for King to use a national tragedy as his promotional stage, but there he was just the same; I’ll never forgive Don King for that, as long as I live.

***

Time heals wounds, but some are just too darned big.

As the days and months passed, I returned to my normal routine at school. But everything felt different. I knew the immense pain I was feeling would take time to heal, but it seemed like things were only getting tougher.

I thought about what happened on September 11th, and all that was lost, each day. But in the first few years after the tragedy, my thoughts would quickly turn to questions:

  • What can bring closure after a catastrophic tragedy?
  • Can you get PTSD from watching people jump out of buildings and get buried by debris, even if you only see it on television?
  • When will we truly be able to feel safe again?
  • Will those responsible for turning our world upside down ever fully pay for what they’ve done?

Answers were fleeting, and the pain never subsided.

***

Eventually, I came to a sobering truth.

There is no closure for a tragedy like this, and there never will be one.

I don’t know when exactly I discovered this, but it marked a significant turning point. I had to live with the fact that my life would forever be changed, that I would forever have a hole in my heart. A part of me was stolen on September 11th; instead of letting it go, I had been wasting years trying to get it back.

A strange thing happened when I came to this revelation — I found solace in it. The pain of the memories was raw as ever, but my soul was no longer in a constant state of restlessness. Somewhere along the line I found God, and faith has been a significant part of my life ever since.

***

May 2nd, 2011

I was sitting in my apartment in Midland, Texas, on a Sunday night, winding down before another stressful and exhausting week as a producer at KMID Big 2 News when my cell phone rang. It was KMID’s weekend anchor on the other end of the line.

“Dylan, our troops killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I’m trying to get more information on this for the newscast, but can you update the station’s website?”

I thought I’d misheard something, but she assured me that yes, Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Soon, I was watching ABC News and writing a detailed recap for the KMID website — from my couch. Journalism at its finest.

Once the story was up and the breaking news rush was over, I took a moment to think about what had just happened. I didn’t even know Bin Laden was still alive at the time, but I felt his death at the hands of our forces provided a bit of relief. Although this might sound vengeful and immoral, I felt that the killing of Bin Laden was justified (and ironically, I was watching an episode of Justified when I got the call about it). A man who brought so much suffering to our world, who ruined so many lives — that man deserved to have that suffering turned on him.

I thought about all this. Then, I thought about the events of September 11th. I prayed about it, went to bed, and slept better than I had in 10 years.

***

November 22nd, 2011

My plane touched down at LaGuardia Airport on a gloomy November day. I was up in New York from Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When my parents picked me up at the airport, they sprung a surprise on me: I wasn’t heading to their house.

My mother dropped my father and I off at a subway station; we rode the train to Lower Manhattan and headed toward the newly unveiled 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site. Where the towers once stood now lay two square reflecting pools, surrounded by waterfalls and the names of those who perished in or around each tower. Quite fittingly, it was raining as we walked around the site.

My father and I hardly said a word as we looked at the water rushing into the memorial, both from the sky and the waterfalls. The silence wasn’t unusual; as a teacher, my father had to explain the unexplainable to a group of frightened sixth graders on September 11th, 2001, and the subject had been mostly taboo for him in the 10 years after that.

At one point, I kneeled by the memorial to think about the victims, and pray for their loved ones. As I stood back up, my father surprised me by asking for a hug. Suddenly, we were talking about what had been off-limits for so long — the events of that fateful day, our intertwined memories of the aftermath, the emotions we had to deal with in the years afterward and our separate quests for closure. After a few more moments, I asked if he was ready to go. “Not yet,” he said. We hugged a second time, each choking back tears. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life.

***

December 26th, 2014

As the late afternoon sunshine slowly faded away from the 9/11 Memorial site, and my father and I made our way into the newly-opened museum on the grounds. While I’m not often a museumgoer, it was important to me to get some new perspective on the tragedy that has so deeply affected my life.

I knew visiting the museum would bring back some gut-wrenching memories, but I had no idea how raw those emotions would be. Archive news footage, police dispatcher recordings — they all brought back feelings from half my life ago, the most harrowing and traumatic memories of September 11th, which I’d long since buried. When I came upon recordings of cell phone conversations between passengers on the hijacked planes and their loved ones — calls to say goodbye — I found myself paralyzed by grief.

Visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my life. I left nearly as broken as I felt in the days after the attacks; I essentially dragged myself up the escalator and out the door when it was time to leave.

But I wouldn’t have traded any of that for a second. If you don’t have a full understanding of all that’s been lost, you can never be truly found.

***

November 27, 2015

The last remnants of the morning fog lifted over New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay as I watched through glass windows more than 1500 feet above the street. It was as if the veil of the past was being lifted to show the future.

As I explored the One World Observatory — atop the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, now towering over the World Trade Center site — I felt many different emotions. Fear was not one of them.

Those that took so much from myself — and so many others — 14 years prior had still failed in their ultimate quest. My very presence, high above the ground at the very site they had once targeted was proof of both our collective resilience and the totality of their failure.

But even with my symbolic journey of resilience and recovery now seemingly complete, one thought permeated in my mind:

Although the view is stunning, this building shouldn’t be here. The Twin Towers should.

All we’ve gained doesn’t wipe out all we’ve lost; it simply reinforces it.

***

“Mama said you gotta put the past behind you so you can move forward.”

Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies of all-time, filled with wisdom I use in my everyday life. But this is not one of them.

I will never put September 11th behind me. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the events of that fateful day. For more than 5,000 days, these reflections have made me both stronger and weaker. The hole in my heart is ever present, the emotions still raw, and the events of that fateful day never forgotten.

But more than that, I don’t think I’d ever want to put September 11th behind me. The past has helped me move forward, as the events of that day have transformed my life ever since. I don’t take a single day for granted, and I strive to treat others with grace and kindness whenever possible. While I lost all traces of childish innocence forever on September 11th, the actions I’ve taken moving forward have helped shape me into the man I am today.

Coping with the memories of that day hasn’t gotten easier. I will carry the burden for the rest of my life. But while I will never be whole again, I am finally at peace.