It takes dead children to pull us all together. Dead children inspire us to do better. Dead children move us to do things we never could have done if we did not have that common desire to protect our young from harm. Dead children are the end result of our failure to cooperate with one another to move things in a positive direction.
Perhaps children can be best defined as the stem cells of our society. They have not yet developed opinions or taken sides. They are still open to be influenced and modeled after ourselves. Perhaps it is this neutrality that allows us to be more moved by the death of a child than a death of an adult.
When an adult dies or is killed, we don’t feel as moved. In fact when some tyrant dies we actually feel a sense of happiness and joy that they are no long around to do harm. So as other people with different opinions than our own die, we some how feel we have gained and are moving towards our goal. It is that cold hearted feeling that diss-allows us to find common ground, and to understand each others view point, and that is why the death of children hit us so hard as they are recruits for our side and our viewpoint.
We feel we do our best to protect children within our means, but we are seeing more and more that there is no foolproof way to insure their safety. When the mentally ill are unable to get the help they need, we put everyone at risk simply because mental illness is not always visible to the untrained eye. Because it is not always visible, we feel a false sense of security.
It takes dead children for us to even consider the common sense approach when it comes to many things. Whether it is gun control or return to the days of the wild west where there is a chance to defend yourself with your own fire arm. Whether a mandatory death penalty or not should apply to drug dealers. Whether or not more emphasis should be placed on mental health care as a preventative measure to protect our children and families.
It takes dead children for us to even begin to understand what it is like to live with someone who is mentally ill. Care for them is much different than care for someone with alzheimers. You are not only concerned for them, you are concerned for your own safety as well.
It takes dead children for us to see our own flaws and that the status quo is only one frame in a movie. If we do not evolve, we will become extinct like all that would not or could not evolve before us. As our population grows, there are more and more people that need help, and it only takes one sick person to do a lot of damage.
It is so unfortunate and sad to be able to say in total honesty, we are inspired by dead children.
