Vain attempts at meaning

This has been a week of tragedies...the Minnesota school shootings, the Jessica Lunsford sexual abduction and murder case.

Terrible events, all. Yet every time events such as these occur, the same things follow. News talk shows ask “experts” what the government can do to guarantee that tragedies like this will never happen again. A misguided affected person or a legislator with a desire for name recognition will introduce some worthless piece of legislation intending to correct a symptom related to the tragedy. This week’s news brought an onslaught of debate on, “Do we need more cops in schools?” “How do we protect our children?” Maybe we all need bars on our windows.

A recent pathetic example of this is of a mother whose son died on his 21^st birthday from binge drinking. Sheis dedicating her life to getting a law passed that would declare that the 21^st birthday doesn’t occur at midnight, but rather at sunrise the following morning. The premise is her son died because he went to a bar at midnight when he turned 21 and he might still be alive if he hadn’t been able to do that. Sad, because it’s flawed thinking, wasted energy, and ultimately a law that has no purpose other than to someday appear in a book of stupid laws. Maybe the reason you can’t whistle underwater in Vermont is a misguided mother’s love. (I do wonder how that one came about!)

The truth is one can never guarantee that these things will never happen again. Just this morning the news gave us a story from Iowa similar to the Jessica Lunsford case. People will always commit crimes, people will always do wrong. “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.”

The real tragedy is seeing people put hope and trust in those vain attempts to find meaning.