Tag: school shootings

Thoughts for Thursday

+ From 2009-2018, the United States had 288 school shootings. Mexico, the next country in line for most school shootings during that time period, had 8. (CNN) Since Columbine, the United States has had 416 school shootings (Washington Post). Let me state the obvious: currently, whatever we are, or we aren’t doing, to address this problem IS NOT WORKING. What are our priorities?

+ Speaking about priorities, I was listening to a podcast yesterday and the podcaster (Jessica Lanyadoo) made an interesting analogy. She said that our ideals are the starry skies, but our values are the street lamps that light the way. Our ideals are the utopian vision of the world we would like to see. We don’t have enough power or control to turn the whole world into our ideal utopia, but we can change the light bulbs on “our street lamps.” We can make sure that we are spending our time and our energy on what we most value. When we do this, we have created a lighted path that leads the way to making footprints towards the starry skies of our ideal world.

+ There is common terminology used to describe penises: “showers or growers.” (I’ll let you google that for the more detailed explanation.) Recently, though, I heard the terminology used to describe people. “Showers” (not like rain “shower”, more like going to a broadway “show”) are the people who razzle and dazzle you from the get go. They are entrancing, charming, interesting people whom you almost instantly like, and whom you feel attracted to from the start. On the other hand, the “growers” are people who “grow on you.” The “growers” are people whom you aren’t sure how you feel about them, but if you give them a few more chances to get to know them, you start to discover their wonderful intrinsic qualities. They are like mystery packages that when you start unpacking them, they reveal really nice surprises. Showers put it all out there instantly. Showers are flowers in full bloom. Growers are flower buds. We need both kinds of people in our lives. However, in my personal experience, it’s often the “growers” who have turned out to be the steadiest, most impactful relationships in my life. Showers sometimes have the tendency to burn out fast. Showers sometimes turn out to be fake flowers.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2020. Do you like photography or videography better?

Your Own Little Jail

My friend was talking about the unhappiness she was having in her job the other day. She said that she realized that she was more than willing to take less money for less stress in her life. I suggested that maybe she could actually make comparable money, and still find a job that was less stressful than her current job. My friend is an expert in her field. She has spent her entire adult life cultivating her skills in this area. My friend deserves to be paid well. I told my friend to question and investigate her belief that a well-paid job automatically comes with a great deal of stress.

I read an article the other day that suggested that by the time we reach adulthood, roughly 70 percent of who we are is unconscious conditioning. We take on the beliefs of our families, our communities, our countries, our religions, our educations, our generational peers, and our professions, and we don’t do much to really question and explore these beliefs to see if they really resonate with the deepest parts of our own core selves. Unfortunately, it often takes a full blown crisis in our lives, to wake us up to our own truths.

Is there an area in your life where you are struggling, maybe not at full-blown crisis stage (yet), but an area in your life that just doesn’t feel right? Explore your beliefs around this problem. Are your beliefs true? Is there another way of looking at what you are going through? Have you created yourself a prison of “Well, this is just the way things are”, or a guilt prison of “Well, this is what I should do”? Where is that should coming from? Is it really your own judgment, or is it a conditioned judgment that you have never really examined and questioned? When you do this activity, you may find that you have been your own jailer, hemmed in by your own limited, conditioned beliefs. While this can be an upsetting realization, it is also a freeing one. When you are your own jailer, you are also the one who holds the key to your freedom.

*****In regards to yet another American mass shooting tragedy that happened yesterday in Nashville, take some time to really examine your own beliefs about what could be done concerning this epidemic of needless devastation. One thing that I am certain about, (a belief of mine that I have fully explored, and personally experienced in my own life many times) is “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” One person isn’t going to fix this problem, but we all can do our parts. Take some time to explore what part you think you might be able to do, to help solve this problem. (Don’t waste time arguing about what other people should do. What could you do? Contact your local politician? Sign a petition? Volunteer for a mental health organization? . . . . ) Think outside of the box. Our future generations deserve more than this current “Oh, this is just the way things are” defeatist attitude.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Zoom Bomb

My daughter was traumatized yesterday afternoon. She was having an online meeting with her Future Business Leaders of America club, and the meeting was “Zoom bombed” by racists. The videos that were released into the meeting were horrific, including swastikas, guns, and images of people hanging. The teacher moderating the club meeting was powerless, as the hackers had locked out any functions that would have enabled her to close the meeting. The school is doing what it can to find the awful perpetrators. As a mom, I am doing what I can to offer open arms and listening ears, whenever my daughter needs me.

It sickens me that I have had the thought, more than once throughout this whole pandemic, that at least with having my daughter doing her schooling from home, I don’t have to worry about her being a victim of a school shooting this year. It makes me want to vomit that a school shooting is an actual, real concern of mine. This is a concern that would sadly seem reasonably plausible to most people, and a concern which many parents share in.

When I kissed my daughter goodnight last night, I reminded her to wake me up at any time, if she couldn’t fall asleep, or if she had nightmares. I told her that if her thoughts went to the disturbing images that were thrust upon her, she should try to change her thoughts to people and to things that she is grateful for in her life. In this way, she could transmute her thoughts away from evil, and into the light of love and good and joy. All three of her protective big brothers (and of course the strong arms of her father) reached out to her throughout the afternoon and the evening. There is no doubt in my mind, that despite being viscerally violated, my daughter ended the day knowing how completely loved she is by her family. She was able to sleep through the night.

evil-quotes-hd-wallpaper-9.jpg (1024×768) | Evil people quotes, Evil quotes, Lincoln quotes

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Attendance Excuse

Fortune for the day – “With true friends, even water drunk is sweet enough.” – Chinese proverb

My daughter stayed home from school yesterday. She wasn’t sick. She didn’t have anything special outside of school, to attend. She wasn’t ill-prepared for a test. My daughter is not a senior and it was not a “senior skip day.” My daughter stayed home from school because someone had made a shooting threat to her high school, over social media. We live in Florida and the demographics of our high school are very similar to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the horrific Parkland shootings occurred two years ago on Valentines Day. Despite our school principal sending an email of “assurance” that there would be extra police protection on campus, a lot of parents made the same decision that we did, and they, too, kept their children home from school. My daughter’s friend texted her that there were four kids in her first period class. Thankfully, blessedly, no incident occurred and supposedly arrests have been made, concerning the threats made on social media, but sending our children to school was not a risk many of us parents were willing to take. It’s hard to walk the fine line between not living in fear and anxiety, yet accepting the cold, hard realities of today’s world. I don’t know the answers to this terrible violence problem that we have in our country, so for me, right now, this problem remains solidly in my prayer box. And in the meantime, I will control what I can control. My daughter stayed home from school yesterday, for no other reason than we feared for her life and for her safety.

“There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.” – Napolean Bonaparte

“Violence isn’t always evil. What’s evil is the infatuation with violence.” – Jim Morrison

“In violence we forget who we are.” – Mary McCarthy

“If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.” –  Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands.” –  Ernest Gaines    

Game On

My son was almost arrested a few days ago. He had only been home from college for about a day and a half. He is an excellent student and he attends a prestigious university. He was with three other friends, with the same kind of pedigrees. It was in the middle of the day. What was his offense? He and his friends were visiting their previous high school teachers and coaches. Despite being what would be called “distinguished alumni”, they are never allowed on the school property again, for the rest of their lives. Why? They entered the school through the back teachers’ gate (on advice from a former teacher). My son and his friends were technically “trespassing” and in today’s world, that is a serious, serious offense.

My daughter is a sophomore, at that same high school. Every day that I drop her off at school, I anxiously scan the crowd going into the high school, trying to get a feel for the energy of the kids and of the other people entering the school, each day. I say a little prayer for everyone’s safety (I’m pretty sure that I am not the only parent who does this) and I wave to the school officer, the same officer who almost arrested my son. Earlier in the school year, I thanked the lead school police officer for making me feel safe, and for giving an aura of calm and authority, to all who enter the school.

My feelings are very conflicted on this entire situation. The police officer acknowledged that my son and his friends are “good kids”. He knows that I volunteer every week at the high school, as I wave to him as I head into the office, to mentor my student. These are some of the reasons why the school police officer gave my son and his friends “a break.” By banning them from school property forever, they got off lightly. They won’t have arrests on their records. The officer assured me that he will probably have to do a lot of explaining as to why he didn’t arrest them for trespassing. Their principal was in tears, begging the officer not to arrest this group of kids, all who had been in the top ten of their graduating class, this past spring. But ever since the horrific Majory Stoneman Douglas massacre, that occurred right here in Florida, the laws are incredibly strict. And as a mother of a student at the high school, I am grateful for this fact.

I have been letting this situation churn inside of me for several days now. It has been unsettling and upsetting, to say the least. My son played basketball for the school, but he is never allowed to attend one of their basketball games again. His friend, a former baseball player, can never go on to the baseball fields. My son will never be able to pick up my daughter from school, for me, nor will he be able to attend one of her high school tennis matches. The teacher who texted the kids to use the back gate, has taught students for years on end. His students consistently have the highest passing rate for the AP Calculus exams, in the entire county, sometimes even in the state. Nonetheless, he is in serious trouble and he may lose his job.

The kids were wrong. The teacher was wrong. The rules are in place for a very good reason. I think that the biggest pit in my stomach lies in the fact that this is a prime example of where we are, in today’s world. This is what it has all come to, and I despise it. For the sake of our children and for our grandchildren and for all future generations to come, we need to change the direction that we are headed in, and we need to find a way to come to a common ground that makes sense for the greater good of our society. Politics, partisanship, superiority, sensationalism and hate, have proven to do nothing for this problem, except to make matters more divisive than ever. We need to wake up.

I wish that I had the answers. I don’t. But I believe that a Higher Good has the answer and if we make it a priority as a WHOLE, to feel in our hearts, our intuitions, and in the deepest parts of our souls, what the right answers are, we can then take loving, tangible steps towards the greater healing of our collective hearts, and of our unified minds. We need to stop living in fear and judgment. We need to stop being narrow-minded and righteous, seeing anyone who doesn’t see things as we do, as the enemy. We need to visualize this problem, as if our entire society was stuck on an elevator car, which is hanging by a loose cable that is about to break, and is about to come crashing down. We need to work together, feverishly, to find an answer to our violence problem. We need to do this, as if our lives depended on it. Because they do. We need to look upon each other as bright, hopeful, capable, sincere people who only want the best for our families, for our friends, for our communities, for our country, and for our society. We need to stop playing coy games. The real game is on, and it is CRUCIAL that we all play on the same team, against the evil that is taking us down.