What a Marysville Shooting Shouts to Each of Us

Another shooting.

This time, not far off; somewhere I can’t map, or a place I’ve never been to…

But here.  Right here in my city.

Oso mudslide in the next town last year, and now some teen grabs a gun and decides to shoot hate inside a lunch room…instead of love?

And when video games immune us to death, blood splatters on screens, or we watch another murderous rampage get face-time because of death…what are the lonely to do?

And we don’t see them.  How could we?  We are busy running, racing, planning trips to Hawaii…or weekends filled with leisure.

But they exist.

The aching, hurting, lost souls crying out for attention and affection…exploding on the inside, because of words and this holocaust happening within the crevasses of their very own hearts…

A death with their face on Q13 news seemingly a much better way to go, than silently melting into a world that never saw them in the first place.

And I wonder where hate got breathe, life, power, and a voice to unapologetically  manifest on unsuspecting teenagers?

And yes, they may be the entitled.  A generation of expectations, and demands, and insisting on their own rights….but did we ever think we might have breathed life into this imploding generation, a youth insisting that their voice, their will, their revenge is something worth acting out….despite others feelings?

And I wonder, in this technology age.  This, “I see you on a screen, and somehow that makes you not real”…this, “I can’t touch you, you can’t see me, I can’t lock eyes, or reach out to influence your world”….has just fanned into their world..more aching loneliness, more isolation, more narcissistic egocentric entitlement that speaks its lies deep under breathes searching, “We must live or we simply will disappear, not existing, not mattering to anyone….especially those on the other side of the screen”.

So, we do what we have learned.  Get our faces known.  And if we can’t do it through nice comments and pretty wording, if we can’t even do it with provocativeness or arguing infernos….we kill someone to be seen by everyone?

And maybe could it be…we have created a generation that just doesn’t care anymore?

For, how easy is it for us to point fingers, blame the shooter, label him, “hate”, rip him apart, put him in a box with those other mass murders….when in reality, he is the very son of the society we created?  Possibly our neighbor, a child who needed us, or a kid we brushed passed from our own children’s daycare?

Still,  he was somebody.  All those hurters, and haters, and killers are somebody’s children.

And I think it’s time we stop blaming, and start loving them.  Stop labeling them and segregating a generation that may not look or even act like we expected…opening up our arms wide and embracing these children seeking their arms rights through the guns they are holding?

For no murder starts with bullets flying in a lunchroom.  No hate starts with rages and infuriating revenge tactics.  All killing starts with whispering, and questions, with offense and bitterness….with isolation and loneliness.

It’s in the darkness murderous boils hate stirs, where young people bewildered and discouraged turn to video games, phones, computers instead of people, turn to screens, instead of looking face to face at the people that are often too busy…

While where are we…the ones they need most in this world?

And I wonder if we should stop “feeling sorry” for these shootings?  Stop “chalking this murder up” here in my very neighborhood as “another crazy killing”?  Start putting away our screens, start reaching, loving, being a friend to those reaching….start asking questions…

You know, those hard questions.  Like, “Why doesn’t anyone see these things coming?”

Could it be we don’t see, not because we are blind…but because we don’t want to?  We would rather sit in our pews, lock ourselves in our insulated houses, rather live life separated by a screen from other people…

When children are dying.  Hate is burning.  Loneliness is breeding a generation that is crying out to be seen.

Will they have to implode, kill each other, create another outrage for us to put down our phone, stop, listen…Take some time to see them?

For hate can’t grow soaked in love.  And isn’t it our job to not just “talk” kind thoughts, but reach out, touch, help, get messy for the next generation, deprived of love?

And after all, isn’t love the ultimate remedy to children holding guns…

Shooting each other in cafeterias?

(Linking with Barbie)