Call me overly empathetic, big hearted, an idiot-saver, or tell me I have completely lost my mind. While I feel so deeply for the families and friends left behind after their loved one passes on and out of this cruel world, I feel almost as deeply for the desperate and ill men who carry out these crimes. How does an individual get to this point in their world, where they disconnect from our world and why wasn't anyone able to bring them back over? I feel desperate and anxious that an individual feels the only way for the pain to stop is to inflict pain and take their own life, if they are lucky.
So being the positive person I am ( or the most positive I can be), I look not for reasons but for solutions. Because see, asking why, I think, is simply an excuse for us not to acknowledge what we already know. We know that our system, our society, our connectedness is broken. People fall through the cracks, jump in the cracks, wallow in the cracks and the energy it takes to help them out just feels like too much. In light of this, I pose this question, Is the energy we are spending grieving, questioning, hating, and crying, more energy than we could have spent helping?
Now I'm just as guilty as the next one. I didn't know this soul, I didn't personally know of his pain, anguish, and anger. But I do know that our world doesn't view mental illness as a sickness. We view it as choice, something to just get over, deal with, move on from, fix. But we don't speak of it as we should, as a cancer of the mind. A cancer of our behaviors. If mental illness were talked about as something where each person you meet is so simply devastated, then rallies around you to support you, brings you the casseroles, and ensures that their lives are now entwined in your recovery, could today's tragedy be prevented?
As the solutions pour in, gun control issues inevitably come to the surface. I am an advocate for my 2nd amendment rights and I am an advocate for control. I believe that as a democratic people, we should be able to arm ourselves at the same level as our government. Because although we have a compassionate leader in our White House today, we may one day have a leader who wants to take his/her power too far. And I believe the knowledge that the masses are able to defend themselves on the same level as the government, keeps everyone in check. At the same time, how do we prevent these weapons from getting into ill person's hands? I don't have the answers. But I do have an idea....
What if we take all the energy, money, time, and thoughts about gun control and put it to use elsewhere? Put it into health care, support programs to help parents raise their kids, programs that allow families to balance their lives. What if these "funds" started at birth with parent education, changing/different ways to raise children in a changing world, help for mothers and fathers with newborns, programs to keep a couple's connection alive and thriving. What if families were assigned a helper when they had children, someone to help with the laundry, shopping, housecleaning, extra work assignments. A trained person who allows a couple to re-focus on their relationship when it's needed most. Where are the preventative programs to identify children and parents who are at risk in pre-school and elementary school, psychotherapists, educators, helpers, supporters, so that men, women, and children have a bridge to help. Work programs that compensate you with time, money, or other incentives to be your best. Colleges and Universities that require check ins on students during stressful time periods. Hell give them credit towards graduation for doing the hard work of a self-inventory. And if you don't know what that is, you should find out. You probably need it.
I truly believe the money is there, privately or publicly. If mental illness can be treated as a cancer, a societal harm that billions of dollars are put behind to help stave it off to start with, could we have prevented the atrocities in CT, Oregon, Arizona, California, Colorado, Virginia, and every other state, institution, school, mall, place of worship, or camp that has experienced this.
And I'm going to take back what I said earlier about not knowing the answers. I do know the answer, it's compassion and LOVE! LOVE yourself enough to get help, LOVE your spouse or partner or friend or family member enough to seek out help, LOVE you ex-spouse, ex- partners, ex-bosses, ex anything enough to know when they really need help, and LOVE your neighbor, the stranger on the street, the person on the park bench as your friends. Because as my friend Laura, who was killed in a mass shooting at her hair salon in Seal Beach, CA in Oct. 2011, would say......
LOVE IS LOUDER!!!!
