This madness is everywhere. The moment we seem to reach any kind of balance, something happens and the world is once again turned on its head. We are not a peaceful people. We are not patient. We are not kind. Bullies are everywhere and in every form imaginable. Crazy people… Broken people… There is no hiding from it. Why?
From Columbine in 1999 to Florida just yesterday, the news is horrific beyond words. Still, we tsk tsk and shake our heads at the horrors safely encapsulated on the television and internet. A few days later we are back to business as usual. Yes, yes, so sad… okay, break time’s over, back to work.
Should someone have known? Maybe. The signs were there: loner tendencies, trouble in school, fascination with guns… I’ve got news for you, we all create this. Setting aside how easy it is to get hands on guns; leaving out my opinions on the NRA and gun control; Yes, that’s a piece of the puzzle, and anyone who says it isn’t is not looking at the broad enough picture. No, the piece I’m concerned with is the deadly downward spiral of how we treat those who are beginning to marginalize themselves.
Our children are living in a battlefield. Psychological issues from ADHD, depression, and the expansive range of disorders and imbalances that plague our children and lock them securely in the cages of their minds are more prevalent than ever. The moment a child is determined to be imperfect in any way, they are labeled and stigmatized to the point that they feel substandard and broken from a very young age. Yes, psychological problems in children are very real, as evidenced by the news lately, but so is their ostracizesation. They are banned by common consent from whatever society deems too important or precise to include anyone considered broken or imperfect. Basically, they are collectively banned from any kind of normal life.
I’ve watched as people’s attitudes and demeanors changed when they found out my son had ADHD. As it turned out, there was more going on with him than ADHD, but that’s where it began. There were the ones who automatically assumed that he had little to no worth and the reason behind it all was my lack of decent parenting or that he needed a solid beating or strong drugs. One of his early teachers told me – her words – that the teachers trade off the inclusion class each year so no one gets the stupid class every year. Really? She labeled the entire class as stupid and treated them thus. He remembers that. They told him he’d never read or amount to anything. Just pass through and get a job pushing the button all day because that’s the best you can ever hope for. Well, dang, that’s bleak… Way to give the kid something to look forward to, huh?
They might as well have handed him a gun and said “Here, do the world a favor and shoot yourself. It might also be a good idea to take some of these other idiots out before you go, especially because they are going to bully and ridicule you all the way through your school career. Maybe a couple teachers, too, because let’s face it, none of us like you.” I know that this is not what she actually said, but the “stupid class” comment and the way she and his other teachers treated him, they planted a seed deep in his heart and mind. If that seed is fed and nourished and brought to fruition, it blooms out in blood and pain that is spread to anyone within a bullet’s reach.
We have a decision to make and it’s not an easy one. Do we become the beast that spawns those headlines? That’s the easy way. That’s maintaining the staus quo and allowing ourselves to be complacent. It’s ignoring when the situation when our kids tell us there’s a bully in the school or that they or someone else is outcast. It’s brushing off comments as adults that plant these horrible seeds in our youth. It’s not defending those who are defenseless, and I don’t mean with guns. I mean by addressing the problems before they leave the caged minds and show up on the evening news. We have the means. We know the signs, long before they become massacres. We think as a society that more guns are the answer. More jails are the answer. Corporal punishment is the answer.
The answer to what? Maybe if the question is “how could we possibly make things worse than they are already?” The hard choice is helping. I don’t mean psych evaluations to determine if the shooter was sane at the time or could be tried as an adult. I mean help for the children when they first exhibit the signs of trouble. These people don’t just wake up one morning and think “oh, good, today is Wednesday; I think I’ll be a mass murderer today.” This is years in the making; Years of hurt and shame and abuse at the hands of a world that, in their minds, doesn’t like them anyway. Who is willing to tell them any different? We ignore them, which validates the feeling of being out of place, which makes people not want to be around them, and on and on and on. We have to reevaluate how we interact with people.
I would like to say that people are generally good, though the cynical side of me fights the words before they ever make it to my mouth. I’ve witnessed some pretty terrible things. I have also seen people do acts of such stunning bravery and kindness that my heart swells with pride at just being in the same species. When we decide as a people to be kind and loving to those who need it the most, that is the outcast, the downtrodden, the hurt, the abused, and show them the compassion that withers the seed of evil that ridicule planted, we will begin to see fewer and fewer headlines like the ones from yesterday. We must have the strength of will not to just let it go and doom these troubled kids to this kind of fate.
In all the madness, can we even imagine this path? Can we will it into being? In this world of chaos, can we take those steps down that path of peace? Yes, we can. We have to. Our will has to win the day because the alternative is worse than unthinkable. Once and for all, we have to show that where there is a will, there is always a way.