Caring is easy. Apathy is work.

A lot of work.

Someone admired by thousands...tens? hundreds? of thousands of people dies. Someone whose career you might have followed for decades, depending on how old you were when he passed. For me, it was 12 years. A dozen years I spent cheering the successes and lamenting the losses. In life he was someone to be admired. Someone whose work ethic was, if not the peak in his sport, then at least the first one out of base camp when it's time to climb.

Someone whose life went to absolute shit in the time before his passing.

Reconciliation is tough as shit. If you ask me, it's pretty much the quality you need to develop the most in order to be an adult. And so when someone you admire dies, you want to feel the loss. When someone dies embroiled in scandal, especially one which involves inhumane treatment of a defenseless, underage child, people get conflicted.

It's understandable.

How often do you think? I mean really stop everything else and work through a problem in your head. Maybe you had to make a decision about grad school, or evaluate your (romantic)relationship with someone, How many times have you sat down with yourself and basically talked yourself out of no longer liking someone? I had to do it. I don't deserve a medal or anything. You don't "win" anything for distancing yourself from someone who has committed real atrocity.

Reconciliation.

When you have an 85-year-old brain--a brain with an advanced form of dementia--then yes, your decision-making skills are not what they need to be. Hindsight tells us that hey, if he had just stopped and retired a decade ago, this might not have happened. It might have, anyway. That's how shitty situations work. They don't look for permission.

A Hall of Fame career? Absolutely. A legend? Yeah, I have no problem applying that label. An entire career written out of existence because of what heinous acts come to light?

Maybe.

Cognitive dissonance.

Caring is easy. Mourning is natural. We want to only see the good in people. We don't want our idols tarnished. Putting these things ahead of the welfare of children is just as scummy as hurting the children yourself.

Apathy is work.

Reconciliation.

R.I.P. Chris Benoit

-@K