Love, as an Answer

this is not about gun control or mental health care alone. this is about when we as a society will begin caring enough about each other that we don’t become so desensitized to the suffering of millions of Americans daily that it takes the blood of children to wake us up. this is about a country with untold wealth and resources that allows veterans to sleep on the streets at night. this is about  a country that allows children to go to bed cold, and hungry. this is about a country that is okay with failed social safety nets until we are forced to confront the ugly realities such an approach engenders.

this is about people upset about spending on welfare because those “shiftless bastards” should just pick themselves up with their bootstraps. this is about a country that locks up thousands of people living with mental illness or drug addiction in jails because it is easier than helping them. this is about being okay with failed public school systems condemning generations of minority youth to a futureless future.

i wonder how much of the outrage and sadness expressed in mainstream and social media today will be channeled into meaningful action- how many months will it take for this to become a memory that we ruefully shake our head about without changing anything. i’m not suggesting that evil can be forever banished from the landscape if we only spend more on the suffering masses, but it can go a hell of a long way. i’m also not suggesting that if we pass stricter gun control laws that mass shootings will be relegated to an unfortunate point in time of our history never to repeat itself, but i guess what i’m saying is we have to really love each other.
we need to have empathy, compassion for others. we have to care about the fates of people in ghettos far from the safety of our homes, care about the fates of everyone that is not part of our immediate social networks. as long as we primarily trouble ourselves only with ourselves and our wallets we will forever be subject to tragedies both as immediate, shocking and heartwrenching as today, but also the longer, slower and less dramatic extinguishing of dreams, communities and lives for want of simple love manifested in meaningful ways.

-kd-

wishes of comfort to those suffering so terribly from today’s tragedy