"It's real easy to forget what's important, so don't."

***Disclaimer : Some vulgar language.***

The title is a quote from one of my favorite movies, Mr. Mom.

My most sincere apologies go out to the families of the children and adults who were slaughtered needlessly today in Connecticut. I was on lunch break in the cafeteria when I heard the news. it was a good day so far, I sat at the upper level of the cafeteria because I wanted to watch Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, instead of Sports Center. I wish I didn't sit up there. The last three and a half hours were spent trying to work, but my thoughts kept going back to the report I heard. At the time, there was just some scant updates, twenty people shot, some were kids. I spent the rest of my day avoiding updates of any kind about the topic. I was hoping that the shooter was as bad of a shot as he was a major asshole. I was hoping that these victims were just wounded, that there were no deaths. Who shoots up an elementary school? I tried my hardest not to be anything more then just choked up. I did not want to shed a tear at work. When I got my daughter from daycare, who is five years old and just started kindergarten this year, a tear welled up a little, but held I composure. I all ready had the intent of making a blog about some of the things I thought about at work, but I had to do one last thing before I started writing. I had to see an update. Twenty-seven dead, including the shooter, and twenty were children. I couldn't hold back the tears any more. They started flowing like a river. This whole event breaks my heart. It's only eleven days until Christmas. These families should be going out and finishing Christmas shopping together. The parents should be excited about seeing their kids reactions on Christmas day when their kids get what they have been begging for over the last few weeks. The kids should be excited for Christmas. They should be baking cookies for Santa. Instead, these parents have to do something every parent fears, they have to make plans to say their final goodbyes to their kids. Instead of watching whatever Christmas movie is their tradition to watch with each other, they have to sit and wonder why their kids were ripped away from them. I just cannot fathom the feeling of emptiness and sadness the families of the victims must be feeling right now, especially at this time of year.

I saw a post shared on Facebook. It angered me. I was seething with rage. The shared post said to allow God into your life, when you don't the Enemy has his way and things like this happen. Really? Is that how that works? Because I'm pretty sure any benevolent god-like entity would have stepped in and prevented this tragedy. But apparently that's not how it works. You see, if you DON'T believe in God, he'll allow innocent children to be killed. This is why I don't believe in God. This is free will. This was the mind of a madman who decided the world needed to know his pain, and the best way to get everyone to understand his pain was to kill children. God has no role in this event, or any other event. There is biblical rhetoric, no biblical quote, there is nothing to find in a book that was wrote by ancient men that will console the victim's families. God and the afterlife is a fable to allow people to think there is something after death, that you will see your dearly departed loved ones again, when you will not. No where in the Bible does it say 'God only gives us what we can handle.' can you imagine telling that load of crap to a parent of a kid who was shot, lying on the floor dying, crying, calling out for mom or dad, who are never going to show up? Yeah, God gives us what we can handle, and at that point in time he thought that kid could handle a slow death from a gun shot.

What it boils down to is that we have FAILED as a society. The End of Days is not coming because these tragedies are happening more frequently. There is a reason why things like this happened so rarely twenty, thirty, forty years ago. As a society, we are all about the quick fix. Instead of working to lose weight, we want a magic pill. America is obese because so many Americans eat out more often then they have an actual sit down dinner with the family. Time is measured now in terms of how much money can you make with your time. It used to be more valuable to spend your time with your family, with the way society has progressed, if you want to live comfortably, you are spending the majority of your time AWAY from your family. As a society we are more involved in what's going on with whoever on Facebook, then we are about asking our kids how their day at school was. There is a reason bullying in schools is out of control now. We, as a people, prefer to be isolated into our own little bubbles, that anything outside of our bubbles does not matter. People used to say it takes a village to raise a child. Now, people are way too afraid to even speak to their neighbors. I don't even know the last names of my landlord, and the neighbor on either side of me. Our society is broken and needs to be fixed. We should be less concerned with how much money we make, and more concerned with making our children's dance recital, football game, choir concert, whatever. Instead we have millionaires and billionaires in congress arguing that the middle class should pay more taxes, not the upper class. I saw Mr. Mom the other day, I used to watch it as a kid. At one point in the movie Michael Keaton's character tells his wife on Halloween "I was going to suggest that you go as a ghost, because even when you're here, you're not really HERE." That's the perfect example of how most parents are these days, and then we wonder why people do the things they do now.

The tragedy in Connecticut should be used as motivation to change ourselves as a society. Yes there are precautions the government can take to help ensure safety, but there is so much more that can be done to overhaul how we act as a people in society, to also ensure this doesn't happen again from an emotional and erratic state. We need to drop our personal barriers and start acting like a community again.