Freethinking for Dummies

The Only Life We Have

We just got back from the candle light service for the assistant principle who was shot and killed at school yesterday. Here are some pictures I took with my camera phone. I didn’t think to bring my good camera because I wasn’t thinking about recording it in anyway.

It was very eerie and unreal, with somewhere between 1000 and 2000 people gathered. They started off with the school cheer and then I couldn’t really hear much else, that was until the most poignant point, when they sang Happy Birthday for the woman who’s birthday would have been today. It was very emotional and very unreal. You see things like this on the news, but it is always somewhere else. To be actually standing there and realize that a human life has been needlessly taken, and seeing the hundred of students and faculty who’s lives have been so horrible changed in an instant is just beyond words.

My kids don’t go to that school, but my son’s girlfriend does. Tonight was actually the first time I’ve met her. Most of the kids I saw were either very quiet or they were acting like this was just another school event, but you could tell from the way they quickly looked away whenever they met someone else’s gaze that emotional turmoil was just under the surface.

The saddest thing to me was realizing just how many people were affected by this tragedy. Students obviously were directly affected, but you knew that their parents, who must have been panic stricken yesterday when the news hit, we just as affected. There too, were the faculty, all of whom must have known and worked closely with the woman who was killed. Even the look in the eyes of a couple of the reporters seems to show that even they were not unaffected.

As I said on my blog earlier today, it is things like this that make you realize how precious life is and how terribly quickly and suddenly it can be snuffed out. Tonight has made me treasure all of the people I know and love more than ever. A message to take away from this is to never, ever take anyone for granted because in the blink of an eye, they could be gone (or perhaps you could be). Our lives are all we really have in this world and it is the people around us who make those lives worth living. To take that for granted, to overlook this fact is probably the one of the greatest mistakes we could ever make.

January 6, 2011 - Posted by James Walker | Uncategorized | death, depression, fear, human, killing, love, murder, pain, personal, rational, rational thinking, sadness, tragedy, violence