Rwanda–nowadays most people only think of genocide at the sound of that name. They grow great coffee and have lots of gorillas roaming free also, but mostly we know Rwanda as the place where people killed their neighbors for 90 days until one million bodies were littered across the land. One of the students here was there. He watched his uncles gathering around the house talking. Then they started out across the yard to the neighbors with machettes in hand. They chased his playmate and his family up a tree and told them that they might as well come down. Then they killed them all. Children first.

The student said, “This killing was caused by stories. None of us have ever experienced cruelty from the Tutsis. That was over 100 years ago. But our grandparents told the stories over and over so that we hated them and said they needed to die.” One thing that tells you a lot about a person is the stories they tell and retell throughout their lives. What stories are you telling?

I had a fellow student at Media Village tell me today about an event that happened during criminology class he took. As the students were focused on the teacher working at the board, a man came in from the hall and snatched her computer bag and ran away. Some of the guys got up to chase him and the teacher stopped them, “You are all eyewitnesses. Write down exactly what you saw.” Some had the man black, others white. He was somewhere between five and six feet tall. Some said he took the purse. The point was that human perception is always affected by emotion and is unreliable as a source of “truth.” I notice that I trust the factual nature of my memories less, especially when I revisit my journal entries, made just after the events, and find that the details are often vastly different from my memory. As Dr. Phil puts it, “Perception is reality.” I think that’s why we need to give each other extra grace, especially in times of stress and conflict when we are all certain that we are right. this is true, as individuals and as nations.