Ricardo Dos Santos.
The odds of this article being where you learn about Ricardo Dos Santos’s death are slim to none. It’s the type of tragedy that rocks a subculture, covered and commented on by every online source there is, so I’m going to spare you the rehashing of his CV. The guy ripped, now he’s gone.
What a heavy thing, to have your life taken at only 24-years-old. It’s the mere beginning of adulthood–so little time to really see the world through your own eyes, to experience the victories and defeats that come with age. It’s tempting to lapse into empty platitudes, to gloss over how much it fucking sucks to see someone killed so senselessly by shutting off my mind and jabbering on about how, “he led and amazing life,” or how “he’s in a better place now.” But you shouldn’t lie to yourself.
Twenty-fours-years old is so damn young. Issues of maturity and wisdom aside (since those vary greatly between individuals and culture), life is supposed to be so much longer than this. It’s been almost exactly a decade since I was that age, and in those years I’ve had more adventures, more moments of triumph, and more soul crushing defeats than I can count. I’ve become a totally different person, growth forced on me by the passing years. That journey is magical, and to have the chance to experience it stripped away by another person’s idiotic decisions… it’s painful to consider.
He’s a part of the void now. Not resting in some mythical Valhalla, not watching over us, not ready to reunite when others shed their mortal coil. He is just gone. I hate the feeling that I’m treating what little solace his friends and family may be able to find with disdain, but neither can I justify pretending, for even a moment, that he’s anything more than vanished. To say anything else would diminish the tragedy. It would temper the horrible actions of a small-minded fool with a non-existent bright-side.
For those of us who were not part of his life, there’s little more we can do with the news of his passing than to try and wring out some sort of lesson. Use it to gain at least a drop of wisdom, take away something that makes our lives better, and the lives of those around us safer and more rich. Which is hard, nearly impossible. Our experiences and our understanding are always filtered through a lens of personality. To differentiate between learning and merely reinforcing your own view is no easy errand.
Ricardo Dos Santos had his life stolen. His death was not the result of illness, or misadventure, or plain awful bad luck. He was murdered by a coward with a gun. A coward who, if the reports are accurate, was given by society the authority and the ability to kill at a whim. Giving a man a gun and a badge does not make him righteous, or just, or even decent. It makes him a man with a gun and a writ to use it; a terrifying proposition if you ever find yourself on the other end of the barrel. We like to pretend that the people who judge us and seek to control our actions are in the right, that they’re somehow better than the average human. But they are just people, and to give them carte blanche all too often breeds a culture of violence and intimidation. No man should believe he has the power to act with impunity, regardless of what oath he took or uniform he wears.
It’s taken a death to tone down, at least temporarily, the hateful online anti-Brazilian rhetoric. If anything good comes of this, maybe it’ll make a few people reevaluate their bigotry. I’ve never met a Brazilian I didn’t like. They’re a beautiful people with a rich culture who live in a world with a level of violence most of us can hardly comprehend. We love to separate ourselves based on notions of race or jingoistic national pride, but in the end, we’re all just surfers. People who find joy in playing in the ocean. None of us are better or worse or more respectful or more rude. We’re all just people, facing each challenge as it comes and trying to make it to the end of the day without sacrificing too much of what we hold dear.
My heart goes out to the friends and family of Ricardo Dos Santos. I’m well aware that means little, if anything. But, in the end, in the face of tragedy, we can do little but go through the motions and mumble the words that seek to make sense of the senseless and ease a little of the pain everyone feels.
