“I sure hope the schools learned a lesson from the Virginia Tech massacre.†That seems to be the lament around the country these days.
We are so quick to judge what others are doing wrong, and so slow to learn the lessons from life that are thrown our way. We duck at life’s instructions that head in our direction and hope others absorb meaning from things.
Whose fault was it that so many wonderful people died on April 16, 2007? The school? The person who sold the assassin the guns? The teachers who closed their eyes to the warning signs over the years? Cho’s parents? Classmates who wouldn’t go near the gunman, before he held that title? Whose fault was it anyway?
It was Cho’s fault. Plain and simple.
We are quick to throw the blame on someone other than the young executioner. Cho woke up that morning with a plan. He was determined, and there was no stopping him. If people would have interceded he may have killed different people in a different location, but he was on a mission. He was going to make a statement, and go out of this world in a blaze of glory. What ensued was the result of a mind gone mad. A young man who felt he had nothing to lose, and notoriety to gain.
Did the schools learn a lesson? Did every single person reading this learn a lesson?
“But it had nothing to do with me. What lesson would I learn? There was nothing in it for me!â€
Let’s take a moment out of our thinking and refocus. Let’s for one minute be quick to listen and slow to blame. Let’s use the lives of the teachers and students, who breathed their last on the floors of Virginia Tech, be a model of bravery and courage. They are not here with us to pass on the lessons from that fateful day. But we are.
Some of the greatest minds stopped thinking that day. Did the cure for cancer take a bullet and leave with the cure inside of him? Did the greatest neurosurgeon that was ever going to live, take what was going to be a startling discovery that would be talked about 1000 years from now, fall on that day? Did the young lady that was going to give birth to the greatest writer that ever lived, lose her life that day? These are things that we will never know.
What I do know is that we owe it to every person who took their last breath on that bloody Monday in Virginia to honor the life we have left, to savor each breath that we have, and to do it for those who can’t do it any more. We need to make our lives be a living memorial to the kids that were destined to make a difference in this world. We need to take that torch and carry it in their honor.
We can plant a tree to be a reminder of their lives. Or we can improve our lives, and affect everyone around us, because of their lives. Their lives can have ripple effects that will be carried on for years and years, and passed on from generation to generation. We owe that to our fallen brothers and sisters.
The bad: a mind snapped and innocent people died.
The good: our country became a better place because we took our responsibility and made sure that lost lives made a difference in this world.
On that fateful Monday, when the smoking gun had given out its final puff, parents and friends who heard about the struggle going on at VT were frantically dialing cell phones to be reassured that their loved ones were not affected by the calamity taking place on campus. Some of those parents were thrust into a drama that they had not auditioned for. Friends were given scripts that they could not comprehend. The stage that this was taking place was not in a theater. The stage was on a college campus, and the name of the production was Real Life. It was a production that no one wanted to purchase a ticket to be a part of, and yet manuscripts were thrust into the hands of so many shell-shocked actors. The play had begun and the acting was for real.
As bodies were zipped up in body bag after body bag to be transported to the morgue and identified, the Medical Examiners carrying the lifeless bodies could not hold their tears as they listened to cell phones in the pockets of the dead, going off inside the bags. They were well aware that those parents were frantically waiting to hear that their child was not among the fatalities of that blood bath. The last thing they had said to their child before that day WAS the last thing that they would ever say.
Did they hang up the phone the last time and leave with bad words spoken to each other? Did they mean to make a trip to their child’s school before the end of the school year, but were just too busy with their own lives? Were they working on saying ‘I love you’ to their child and knew that soon they would feel comfortable saying it, and are now wondering if their child knew how much they loved him or her? How much was left unsaid?
Here is our lesson. Call the person that you have been meaning to call after 9:00 when the minutes are free on your cell phone., and when the time comes you realize that you are too tired to talk to them. You’ll call them tomorrow or maybe the next day. Tomorrow never comes. Carve out time in your week to meet with someone you have been neglecting because they are hard to love. Stop at the card shop and send out a card to your friend to let them know you are thinking of them. Go for that bike ride with your young child that has been begging you. And enjoy every breath of it! Leave your white kitchen floor with dirt spots on it and go to the movie with your spouse. Sit down with the family and watch a movie, oblivious to the fact that the dishes are piled up in the kitchen. Don’t walk past the person in your life who is silently screaming out for a hug.
Live in the moment. This moment. It is the only one that you are promised. This breath. Breathe it next to someone who means the world to you. And make sure they know it. Don’t ever assume again.
No one could have guessed that so many people would breathe their last on April 16, 2007, as they lay next to each other. No one can bring them back to this life. Every one of us can live life more fully, enjoying each sunrise and sunset, because these lives taught us to live. Not just to be alive, but to live. Really live. To savor every morsel of this life.
To those that lost their life, we honor you by living every moment that we are blessed with. That is your gift to us, and from the bottom of our beating hearts, we thank you for this lesson. The world will be a better place because you lived.
by Sandy Griffin, http://SandyGriffin.com
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