The same headlamp that my wife ridicules as high order nerdish. My neighbor kids mock as making me look like a Minnion . But more and more of early morning types see as essential to see and be seen safety. The fog of breath is a portend of things to come.
As I walked I marveled at the silence of a Monday morning. Down the road and out of the dark I see the movement of a figure , so I am alert, quickly I see it is John and Brownie. They will walk with us awhile. John remarks that he looked quickly at his phone and there was another mass shooting, this time in Las Vegas and he tells me that 20 people have been hurt, he is unsure of the death count.
We groan under the weight of more ness of this type. I think of others who eschew gathering in any sort of crowd out of the fear of these incidents, they no longer attend church or go to a movie, a ball game or anywhere there is a crowd. No soft targets, notwithstanding the remoteness of danger, they just have been scarred by news reports of the type. That is understandable. I distinctly recall feeling this at the assembly of riders in the New York Bike Tour in May. I thought that this was an incredibly soft target as I prepared to ride. Is this our new norm, will we huddle within our homes for fear of the evil that might never come near.
It was only a couple of months ago that we spend some time in Las Vegas as the jumping off point of our vacation in the South West. It was not my type of place, but it was the start of a nice vacation.
It takes me longer and longer to process these stories . I can not wrap around what causes this type of violence. I keep on calling for cradle to grave investigation of the shooters involved in these mass shootings. I think that it is essential to the prevention of future incidents to know what it is about these people that makes them go off, aside from the fact that they have a penchant for acquiring rapid fire armaments. There must be a common thread . It taxes my brain to think of this angle to investigation.
This is what troubles me. I look for the cause of everything, and feel that no stone should remain unturned. His past co workers, his neighbors, his family, the clerk at the bank, the post office , the liquor store. As it is , it looks like he was a silent presence, with a lot of money , but perhaps with a habit for action. A peripatetic loner of sorts who hatched an unthinkable scheme.
I am no longer able to really look at the stories of the victims. They are just too sad . A young male nurse and his physician wife celebrating their anniversary, he dead, she a widow. A kindergarden teacher, an off duty police officer , a young man from Canada. What can one say or do. The pain is raw and unending, I think that 9-11 started a cycle of this and it just seems to not end. We indirect victims block it from our memory. How many Orlando's or Sandy Hooks or Boston Marathon or Las Vegas, Aurora stories can one allow oneself to completely absorb, I dare say not many.
Last night going to bed sad, I pulled out a book as I sometimes like to read something to quiet the mind before sleep and in that book, I come upon an idea of how to try and deal with this type of sad ache. In a small paragraph, the author called upon us to respond to life and
sadness by performing random acts of kindness as a normal part of our day and as a normal part of our lives.
I thought that this might be the key to feeling better about humankind, if we all performed these random acts of kindness for each other, we would raise our collective view to the point that we once again believe in the goodness of our fellow man rather than dwell on the ugliness that some carry about. It will never absorb the grief of the loved ones of those killed, but it can possibly in some small way restore some form of hope. If enough of us become kindness deliverers we will offset the evil. And in the story out of Las Vegas we are hearing about selfless acts of kindness that people delivered to their neighbor when most needed. Even out of this there is hope for the goodness in the species. We hear stories of strangers transporting wounded to hospitals and staying with injured for hours and of others laying down their lives for their loved ones. Random acts of kindness.