The truth is sometimes you simply can’t.
The dreadful news that is filling the news this week is of the terrorist attack in Manchester in which 22 people died and as I am writing this 64 people remain in hospital injured, 20 of whom are critical.
How can anyone make sense of a child dying? Of a moment of pleasure for a young person celebrating the end of exams turning into a nightmare of unimaginable proportion? Or of the terrorist who sees a solution in bloodshed?
My son’s girlfriend who is a hard working nurse in a Manchester hospital, told us a story of parents arriving in the ward trying to find their missing child, the very worst thing any parent can imagine!
How do you communicate, let alone negotiate, with the suicide bomber who thinks that the rest of us will go to come round to their way of thinking if they kill and maim bystanders at a pop concert in Manchester?
You can’t.
In the end negotiation is only possible if the sides can see some degree of rationality and compromise in the other side’s position.
It makes no sense. All we can do is continue with our lives and hold those dear close, but not so close as to let irrationality and terror win.
Our thoughts and love are with all of those who were caught up in the atrocity and all those trying to put an end to terror.