Gun Control or Love.. Lacking?
In the wake of the Connecticut killings there is, an emotional and particular outcry of injustice in that most of these victims were young innocent child (their whole lives ahead of them). Although it is an obvious tragedy to have these lives cut so short, is it a lessor tragedy when large numbers of adults are murdered? I ask this question because I, like many of us, seem to have more compassion and outrage when bad things happen to children then when they happen to adults. But-from a spiritual stance, aren’t we all just children...children of God?
I find I don’t have much patience or compassion for adults when they screw up. They should know better by now, I usually think. Yet, I know that’s not realistic. Since we all came from childhoods
less than perfect we brought with us the wounds, the neglects, and the abuses of our innocent past. We who survived the hard often cruel experiences of “growing up” have done so in large part by desensitizing ourselves to our own pain and the pain of others. But carry a dead child in your arms, or the family dog and the whole world feels empathy.
I think that’s wonderful. And I think it’s a problem though, that we don’t have the same ready compassion for grown ups. Personally I don’t feel as freely compassionate with my own self as I do for children and pets. Why is this? Why is it so easy for me to judge and condemn myself for not being better, for not having or doing more?
It appears to me that children dying young and violently touches our hearts, that place in us that feels love and concern for others, for life itself. But what of the millions of soldiers, adults deemed collateral damage (what a farce that term is!), homicides, suicides, addicts, and the depressed adults of our affluent modernized culture? Why stop at children? Why not be up in arms at the abuse of arms no matter who or how many killed? Why not be up in arms at violence and the causes of it at all times?
It seems to me that most of us don’t know how to love others or ourselves adequately. And that lack of love is a hurt that wounds us all. And wounded, with or without intention, we wound one another. Hurt people hurt people.
