Over the past few days, since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newport, Connecticut left 20 young, innocent children dead, I’ve been at a loss.
I’ve lost sleep, tears and motivation. A loss of words, comfort and understanding.
But unlike those poor families, I didn’t lose a child. My thoughts and fears are nothing compared to theirs.
I got to go home and hold my young ones tighter than normal for longer than normal, for reasons they didn’t understand. I got to see my six-year-old daughter wear her Christmas dress all weekend. I heard my three oldest children laughing on Sunday while they built a pillow fort while their little red-headed brother napped. I saw their tiny little innocent faces covered in icing at a cookie party we hosted late Sunday afternoon. I got to tuck them in, sing to them and hear them say, “I love you, Daddy – good night!”
There is a deep sense of remorse tied to something akin to survivors guilt over the fact that somewhere in Connecticut, 20 families, and other families of the adults who died heroically trying to save them, are needlessly burying their loved ones a week before Christmas.
Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about gun control and said that perhaps while we need more of it, the root problem lies within.
It’s still true, but it’s changed. I was wrong. We need to change all of it.
From a lifetime family of hunters, ancestry through Cherokee Indians and all the pride that comes from feeding your family, even if that means I can no longer hunt, then fine.
Comfort cannot be found for the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters of those dead. I know this because I’m uncomfortable. I slip in and out of focus, my mind drifting to those poor children and the horror their families have been facing.
My wife and I quietly mentioned how we didn’t want our children to go to school today. We did it, because we have to believe it can’t happen here.
But it can happen anywhere. Now without connection, reason or motive.
We watched our children play from afar this weekend and got emotional just thinking about it. That could have been them. School is supposed to be a safe environment. Movie theaters, religious buildings. But over the past year, an attack on one becomes a psychological attack on all.
We’re all affected and effected by this. Certainly not even close to the extent of the families and townspeople of Newtown. But the dark clouds of fear have settled over our nation yet again.
There is nothing to be learned by this horrific tragedy, but much to be done. As I heard on Sunday, the simple and uncomfortable truth is that it all starts with us. We can remove guns and knives and anything else, but not the seeds of evil. I still believe that. We can discuss how mental illness must be addressed better, how parenting and isolation and video games all play a role.
But if we’re really going to not tolerate this anymore, then it’s going to take a concentrated effort from all Americans to simply be better today that you were yesterday, better tomorrow than you were today.
Gun control? Fine. Just don’t stop there, please. Because this is not about just getting the guns. We have to get out the darkness in our own hearts, the sinister things we fail to see and remove them.
Nothing can ever be the same again. It doesn’t mean that high schoolers and college students being murdered is less significant, it simply means we’re reaching our ultimate breaking point when six year olds in kindergarten are the victims of these acts.
No one should ever have to be murdered in this fashion, or at all, but if this doesn’t motivate us all under the common ground and cause of real change, what will? If not now, when?
We must change. No more road rage, middle fingers and sense of entitlement. No longer believing that we’re more valuable or important than anyone else. No more texting and playing on phones when we’re surrounded by friends and family.
We must be present in our lives, in our families and children’s lives. We must engage more socially than disengage and retreat. We build community and a sense of good and right and wrong that way.
What we don’t do is glorify these things. We must stop. And that goes for what we saw on CBS Sunday afternoon, for example. To take in the NFL this weekend was to try and escape. But there it was, another reminder of our lackadaisical attitude toward violence, justice, right and wrong. There, on the sideline of the Dallas Cowboys stood Josh Brent, who just last weekend drove drunk, crashed his vehicle and killed his teammate in the process.
It’s appalling the Cowboys did that as an organization. It’s even worse the NFL allowed it. It’s grotesque that CBS showed it.
This change I speak of, cannot be accomplished with simply more laws. It must begin within.
For our family, this process began long before last Friday. We decided some time ago to control more what we can. From the people that we surround ourselves with, to what we consume on TV, radio and in discussion. More Beatles songs, George Harrison singing “My Sweet Lord” and “What is Life” and saying prayers for people outside our family. More giving away to others less fortunate, less consumption of “stuff”. More discussion of what we’re thankful for all year, not just for a day in November.
Garbage in, garbage out, right? It’s time we just say no more garbage, period.
In times like these, we weep for those involved in such an unthinkable tragedy before turning our attention to where to lay blame. This process has begun in earnest with the massacre in Newtown, too.
All the buzzwords are there. Guns. Gun control. Lobbyists. The NRA. The NRAs money and it’s affect in the political realm. Parenting. Mental illness. Isolation. Broken home. Lack of prayer in school. Video games. Violence. Security.
It’s not one particular thing – it’s the collective whole, guns included. Hollywood, video games, families. All of it.
A difficult truth is that good and evil are allowed to exist in our world. It’s our choice how and when we engage. We can point fingers at laws or the lack of them, violence and it’s prevalence in our society, the media, and so many other things. But in the end, what will we have really changed? If we haven’t changed ourselves and our families, then we’re still failing.
You see, all we do is blame. As I’ve said before, we are a selfish society. It’s time to own up to our part. We need to own what little we can control in a world so obviously out of control: us.
We are still the collective problem. That was the case two weeks ago when I wrote about guns and gun control and remains the case today.
But we’ve got to do more.
So I look in the mirror and ask what this man can do to improve a little each and every day to the benefit of those around me.
An internal focus would do us some good. How can we be better people, spouses, parents, children, working staff and members of society today than we were yesterday? Because the moral depravity we encounter daily without intervention is essentially just watching our society decay. We must parent better. We must be kinder. We must learn to shut off the things that are contributing to our moral depravity that so deeply affect and effect our psyches. And this doesn’t have to even be in affiliation with religion.
The worst thing we can do is get morally outraged for a week or two and then go back to the way things were, which is generally what we do. We can repost comments on social networks and say we agree on this, disagree on that and say that things have to change, but it means nothing if we aren’t the change initiators.
How can we be better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today?
It’s the only way real change can occur and ensure that our tomorrow is not worse than our yesterday. Because everyone lost something in our collective yesterday. We can’t watch in horror as six-year-olds are slaughtered and not make actual change. I can’t continue to look at my four children and fear for what they might have to face.
We must change. All of it.
Let’s get back our tomorrow. Let’s start with today, because it begins with us.
If not now, when?
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