Things Could have Been So Different

This is a post I put on Facebook today. It will be a few days before I do anything more with that site than use Pintrest. My friends list is polarized because of what happened in CT this week. And I am about sick of the people on TV talking about it too. But I throw in my two cents. And then I do what I always do in the face of sadness: I run off to my own little world where there is art, music and the only danger is the over zealous Marshmallow Toasting fire Breathing Dragon and faulty heat protection.

Gun Control, like everything else, is really an issue of SELF control. Those who lack it, also lack empathy, sympathy (yes they are different) and the ability to readjust their personal view points when faced with disappointment. Those who lack SELF control also have an inability to rationally analyze the difference between a want and a need and never reinforce their inborn levels of impulse control through the practices of delayed gratification. Those who lack self control either lack a moral compass of any creed, denomination or humanistic origin or, when severely limited, were never taught to be less selfish. And the way that we give in to selfishness as parents, classmates and  siblings reinforces the inability. It IS easier to appease demanding people what they want because it is a quieter, faster and selfish resolution to conflict. And sometimes it is out of a sense of self-preservation that we give in.

We are ALL part of the problem. We are, because we all take the easy way out when we can. The kind of ruthless self-servitude that it takes to do what was done takes advantage of our desires for peace. That we do not understand what TRUE peace is makes us vulnerable to these people as well. In this way it only takes a handful of people to take charge of us with fear.

Guns do not kill people. They only make those who would kill people more efficient. WE kill people. We kill each other all the time. But most of the time it goes unnoticed because it is death by a thousand hundred million cuts. And those of us who don't take out our selfish frustrations on others internalize it (and I'm being a little over simplistic here) in the form of one addiction or another. We know our revenge fantasies will solve nothing, we know it will only make us feel worse after the fact because we do have high enough levels of empathy to preserve the species. What we lack is the ability to let go of the destructive force inside of us in any truly deeply satisfying way. We destroy the self instead.

We can be brutally cold and say that maybe he was just never going to be any other way and that this was the inevitable outcome of random selection. We can stick our heads in the sand and say this was the work of Evil and blame Satan for existing or God for not doing more. Or we can say something a little more true and level headed... given his internal landscape he ran out of options. The need to destroy something to release the rage that was internalized instead of dispersed or managed won. He lost a fight with SELF control.

And that was the only fight that he was not armed to win.