You know this week I have come to my keyboard to write this blog and somehow I always thought, what I want to say isn’t the message I need to give, so I pushed my chair back and waited. The next day again, I came and nothing. For four days and then this morning the message came. If you have read this blog for more any length of time, you know I have been warning the blurring between reality and technology and the internal self worth of each of us is coming to bear in so many news stories this week.
There was a shooting at a Mall in Oregon. A theater shooting at a movie, a place of worship assaulted on worshipers, a person pushed onto a subway track, and on and on..we have got to pay attention to those who are mentally ill, and stop looking the other way and secretly hoping they will get help or they will just go away. They don’t, they act out when they cross the line. What is going on? What is the cause of this violence. What is the motivation of each of these people who perpetrate crimes on those around them. When people dress up in military gear and head out totally equipped to commit murder, mayhem, suicide, and have gone over the edge mentally. Again the question is: “Why?” Where did this person fall from normal individual, who contributes to society to loosing it all.
We as a society have got to get our head out of the sand and look at how we live, how we model to our children, what we say, what we watch, how our relationships can be improved, the lives which are lead by “consensus” via social media, the amount of time spend on unhealthy games of all kinds, and unhealthy violent media; even the ones for adults they all impact our psyche. Each thing builds on the previous and the repetition of the visual compounds over time and then the blur happens.
Although news reports are sketchy at the moment, we have another senseless robbing of our peace of mind through the shooting of small children and their teachers and staff at a K – 4th grade in Connecticut. Once again we have enormous challenges of healing, the questions that will go unanswered, the horrific loss, the long, long road ahead of the psychological health of every single person even remotely involved in this whole sad event.
The chaos and fear which will haunt these young children and their parents, their teachers, the staff and their families will leave a scar which will always remain an open wound.
As parents we take your children to school and leave for our own day without much thought as to their safety, because we expect them to be safe. This will no longer be the case. We are surrounded by individuals who are bent on revenge, mentally ill, have reached the end of their ropes in situations where they see no hope, no resolution and no way out except to end the pain in whatever form that takes.
If you watched the President’s news conference you saw a different person there behind the microphone, you saw a father who was visibly moved thinking about his own children. We are all in shock.
My heart breaks for these families, the community, the state of Connecticut and our nation. All of us as parents are just sick about this incident.
What will you tell your children tonight?
What will you do in your community?