I'm resisting the urge to be angry

I can't help but be troubled as I write this. It's Sunday; two days after a handful of young men staged a terrible attack on Paris.

There's still a lot we don't know: Was it masterminded by the Islamic State, as the violent regime has claimed? If so, how and what does it mean that the IS can strike at a distance? Is this the end of open borders and freedom of movement? It's easy to be sucked into a feedback loop of fear.

More than 120 people dead, another 100 at death's door, more than 300 injured. So much fear and misery caused by so few.

I'm writing this on my daughter's laptop, sitting comfortably on my bed with a hot cup of coffee. I'm thinking about my family. My wife and I have two children: a boy, 14, and a girl, 10.

Last night, both kids had friends sleep over. It was a fun night. We ate pizza. I took the kids to the corner store here in Coniston to buy a few treats. While the kids hung out, my wife and I sat on our bed and watched TV. She had a headache, so I massaged her neck and shoulders.

It was a pretty typical, relaxing Saturday evening.

I used to be an angry young man, probably like many of you. I raged against the inequalities of the world, against the corruption of government, against the corporations that seem to exert an inordinate amount of power and control.

My anger was directed at those perceived injustices (some real, some imagined) I saw around me — typical for a twentysomething Canadian.

I was angry, yes, but it was a typical western kind of young, white man's anger in that my life was relatively comfortable and easy. I could be angry and still look forward to a life of prosperity and relative ease.

Had I been born in another part of the world things might have been different. My anger might not have been of the philosophical kind.

So as I sat on my bed with my wife, while my children amused themselves with their friends, I thought about the thousands of people in France out enjoying a Parisian Friday night and how it had been a pretty typical, relaxing evening for them, too.

I mourn the dead and the injured. My thoughts are with their families.

I look at the faces of my family and see the faces of the dead and dying on the streets of Paris and I wonder: How could anyone hate them? Their only crime was being born at the wrong time in the wrong country with the wrong culture.

I thought, too, about how that relaxing evening was shattered by a small group of angry young men, men who are angry about the perceived injustices of the world (both real and imagined).

And I have to wonder how the world-view of these attackers became so twisted that in doing evil, they really and truly believed they were doing good. It's perverse.

My atheism aside, it saddens me that they've taken what's good about religion — empathy, sympathy, charity, humility — and turned it into something bleak and dangerous.

Rest assured, this attack will beget more violence. France has called it an act of war. The dead and wounded in France will lead to dead and wounded in the Middle East, most of them, sadly, will be civilians who will be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm troubled and I'm saddened. But I'm doing my best not to be angry. Anger leads to irrationality and the slaughter in Paris is irrationality writ large. I'm doing my best not to think in terms of us and them, because those are artificial constructs. Genetically, there's only us.

The rest — language, culture, religion, skin-tone — is window-dressing. But we continue to kill each other for it anyway.

Mark Gentili is the managing editor of NorthernLife.ca.