Violence has rocked
the United States as of late. Gun crimes have been more apparent over the last
six months than ever before. Aurora, Newtown . . . we wonder what is next.
Maybe even more so, we wonder what we can do to stop these atrocities from
happening again.
Everyone has their
ideas, as was seen above, but at the same time, everyone has their objections
too. Mike Huckabee--how wrong is he to press God onto our children? Would God
have stopped the shooting? He can’t even do that, can he? Please. Burning
violent games—how about we turn the focus on the flaws in parenting allowing
those games to be played? The NRA—how dare they even think that guns don’t kill
people. Guns are murder weapons; that is an easy one. As for Bob Costas—just
let me watch my freaking football game, I don’t want your opinion; I want my
highlights.
No one is right,
everyone is wrong. Or I am right and you are wrong. I know what is best for us,
and you are stupid for thinking differently. Over and over and over. Everyone
has good intentions, everyone thinks that what they have to say can genuinely
help, everyone wants an answer. Maybe that is our problem though, because right
now, there is no answer. We might never have an answer.
When someone
executes a mass-shooting, or a murder-suicide, or whatever it is, we always
seek to know why. Why did Jovan Belcher shoot himself seemingly without
warning? What made James Holmes toss tear gas into the movie theater at Aurora?
What in Adam Lanza’s mind propelled him to go to an elementary school armed
with fully automatic firearms? We can ask why why why as many times as we want,
but the short of it is this—we will never understand. People are crazy. People
are sick. People are depressed. We just do not know.
This is a world
with a lot of answers—you can Google something or ask Siri or look it up from
your tablet—and our biggest struggle right now might be accepting situations
when we do not have an answer. There is no fix-it solution.
So what do we do?
Do we try to explain things we cannot explain? Do we fight for our beliefs and
opinions even though change might be impossible to bring about? Well, yeah.
Sometimes, just being able to give an answer can make a difference. Think about
when you take a test: do you feel better about a particular question when you take
a wild guess as opposed to leaving it blank? Of course you do—you were at least
able to offer something intelligent and reasonable, and you did not just roll
over and admit defeat.
See, that is what
really matters here. In the wake of all of this violence in our lives, no one
is leaving things blank. Everyone is trying to give an answer to explain the
tragedies, and whether someone is right or wrong does not matter, it just
matters that their answer is reassuring to them. Mike Huckabee is able to console
himself through his religious life; he just wants to share his personal
solution with other people. Bob Costas finds solace and sense in words against
ownership of automatic weapons. He sees something that is able to potentially
offer an answer, and in sharing it with you, perhaps he hopes that you find
consolation too. Whatever you believe, whatever you think might amend the
strife and eliminate the horrors from our world—it just matters that you
believe it.
Our world has a lot
of answers, but in the case of unimaginable acts of violence, the particular
answer is just that, unimaginable. When faced with something that we might not
understand, we look all over for a solution, and it does not matter if this
solution is right or wrong or popular or weird. Right now, it just matters that
you have an opinion of what that solution is, because through the process of
understanding, recovering, and healing, believing that there is an answer out
there might be the most important part of it all. An answer means that one day
this all might be preventable. An answer means hope.
So instead of
seeing someone’s outspoken post on Facebook or someone else’s
politically-slanted television interview and growing angry at their idea, just
remember this: it is just an idea. You may disagree with the methods, but the
intention is what matters. In a time of unfathomable hardship for many families
across the country, it is important that we look to be more sympathetic and
less argumentative. Everyone just wants to help, and it would sure be dumb if
we were to attack that help.
After all, are we
not supposed to be the normal ones?
Our country could use some hope right now, and the last thing we want to do is stamp it out.
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