Blah blah blah!!!
Stop with all the comments. I am absolutely done with the conversations that repeatedly take place after every senseless killing spree in this Nation.
Comments like:
It's a mental health issue
He probably had some form of autism...
We need to have more regular people with access to guns...
The ladies at the school should have had guns to shoot him back...
Our schools, churches, movie theaters, malls, places of work need more security...
We need to check people's mental health records before we let them get guns... (As if they gain access to firearms in a legal manner. This boy got these guns from his mom.)
Of course this is not an exhaustive list of suggestions but you've heard similar simple suggestions to this complex issue.
Maybe I'm being a little idealistic here but what we lack in America is not more guns, more laws, more surveillance... We are suffering from a lack of love. True love. Not the kind of love we write about in these whack songs. Not the kind of love that is portrayed in movies and television dramas. Not that lip service crap I hear among religious crowds with statements like "the Jesus in me loves the Jesus in you." What does that mean anyway? We need a TRUE LOVE that changes people to their CORE.
There is absolutely no way you love another then try to manipulate, berate, isolate or violate them! The fear-based love humans display currently is the exact opposite if what we should aim for. This fear-based love is:
Selfish
Impatient
Dishonorable
Self serving (usually cloaked in flattery)
Mean and Nasty disguised with a fake smile
Score keeping (you love me first and then I'll show love for you)
Short lived
Easily provoked
Hopeless
Belittling
Jealous
Boastful
Heavily infused with lies
that is not love, my friends.... In NO shape or form...
Our Nation does indeed have a problem and it is flat out Lovelessness!!
Since last Friday I have experienced a myriad of emotions from extreme sadness to frustration. But now I'm flat out angry... Reason being is that we have talked on this subject ad nauseam since Columbine and very little has changed. How many more people have to die before we really get it?
My very FIRST grand rounds lecture as a University of Florida faculty member in 2005 was on this very subject: "The Interconnection between Unidentified Mental Health Disorders, Unacknowledged Pain and Gun Violence among Young Males." I discussed the unique presentations among different ethnic groups, the different media coverage young black males received versus young white males, and the commonalities in the mental makeup of the two and how Americans seem enraged when the victims look like the characters from a Norman Rockwell painting but seem to care less if the community is non-White.
When I finished you could hear a "rat piss on cotton." Needless to say that was my first and LAST grand rounds during my three year stint.
Don't misread my post - I love and celebrate all cultures! Even the ones I don't fully understand. Pain and death in any community should cause the same devastation and hurt. But these babies and women who were senselessly murdered really got to me... We as human beings cannot and will not achieve the harmony we seek until we acknowledge that we ALL need some major healing... MAJOR!!!
Tomorrow, December 21 at 9:30 AM, has been declared a day of mourning where we will observe a moment of silence to remember those killed last Friday. I guess I'll leave my comments right here for now but I have so much more to say on this matter.
America, we had better get our act together and I mean fast!!
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