What Did We Just Step In?

This week has shocked my heart to the core. The recent tragedy in Vegas is not only frightening, but revealing as well. Frightening in the fact that human beings are not only capable of horrendous actions, but also extremely vulnerable to these evils.

What followed this tragedy, was the revealing nature of our society’s response. And the response, well, that is almost frightening as well. I’m honestly quite shocked I haven’t heard anyone putting the blame on Trump, yet.

In the moment where everyone is panicked and feeling at a time of loss, the media and politicians erupted ; “we need to ban guns”, “you can’t infringe on our rights”, Hillary’s famous “could you imagine how much worse it could have been”, and the increasingly popular “white privilege” accusations.

Are you people kidding me right now? In less than ten hours we are already at war over who is to blame? I have an answer for you, it’s the man who made the decision to plan out a murder spree. The man who spent time going over the sadistic details and setting everything up, inevitably pulling the trigger. That is where the blame lies.

Sure it’s easier to pin the problem on gun control, religion, or ethnicity whenever a tragedy takes place. I mean there has to be an underlying cause to this kind of evil, so let’s use the easiest and most obvious factor in the equation, right?

Well unfortunately, I find that simple solutions will rarely fix a major problem. If your tire is leaking air, you can choose to: a) buy a new tire, simple. b) refill it with air daily which takes more effort and doesn’t fix the problem. c) find the leak and repair it, or d) junk the unicycle because it’s just not a practical mode of transportation.

And when a mass shooting takes place, we can choose to: a) blame the guns, simple. b)become stricter on gun laws which has been proven ineffective in cities like Chicago, where the gun related homicides are relative to that in Vegas on a monthly basis. c) find the flaws in our current gun laws and repair them, or d) don’t blame the guns, but acknowledge the presence of evil and learn how to prevent it.

While some of the choices are appealing and none of them are necessarily wrong, maybe we need to abandon our comfort zone and change our perspective, to forget the wheels altogether and feel the ground at our feet. Maybe if we focus on that ground we can find the answers we need.

By focusing on the ground, you might notice the nail that popped your tire. Then you can choose to: a) blame that nail for popping your tire, simple. b) kick it farther down the road which just means you’ll have to do it again. c) pick up the nail and throw it away, or d) realize that nail didn’t get there by itself, people are dropping them on purpose.

Once you realize that people are to blame, you learn to read the signs. You start to notice when somebody’s pocket is jingling and jagged. You notice a man’s hatred for rubber or love of sharp steel objects. You wonder what would drive a person to be that way. We all have access to the hardware store, why do some people use their nails to immobilize other people.

Maybe the change of perception is not enough. I bet if we took off our comfortable shoes and felt the ground with our bare feet, we would be able to feel the shards of stone that get ground into the heals of others. We would surely take more notice to the broken glass here and there, and we would clean it up together.

Walking in someone else’s shoes is meaningless, you need to walk in their bare feet on their streets. You can buy someone new shoes, repair their old ones or give them some new gel insoles, or you can focus on the paths they take when those shoes come off.