Humans yearn to understand the world around us. We have an innate desire to comprehend the world’s most complex scientific phenomenon and to explain the most inexplicable circumstances.

That deep desire normally causes us to drive humanity forward with scientific discovery and remarkable inventions.

But that drive for understanding comes to a screeching halt when horrible tragedies occur.

The violence Tuesday at the bank in St. Joseph, La., is a painful reminder of this.

Such circumstances are made more vexing when the root of the problem appears to be mental illness. Investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what when wrong inside the young man’s head who at one time was a high school football star, but ended his life Tuesday as a murderer.

Critics will be quick to turn the discussion and efforts to understand why this happened into a debate about other, unrelated things.

The young man was a U.S. citizen, but his family was from Yemen, which immediately prompted cries of terrorism and anti-foreign sentiment.

Gun control will also almost certainly be drawn into the discussion.

None of that will help either the victims or the family of the man whose brain malfunctioned, prompting him to perpetrate this atrocious act of violence.

What should matter is how we, as a community, care for the victims and their families.

They need our comfort and our prayers; they don’t need our opinions, second-guesses about the causes or law enforcement’s response.

Our desire to understand such tragedies should not get in the way of our being human.