Another shooting in Colorado

I received a text early around six fifteen that awoke me but I paid no attention to is as I was trying to sleep and upset it awoke me. On the way to work I looked at the text which was from t he campus emergency alert system. It cautioned employees traveling to our Campus in Aurora as there was police activity near campus and they should avoid Peoria (a major street that borders campus). I did not think much of it and shuffled out the door to work. At the bus stop I realized I misplaced my bus pass so I drove to work. My phone began to vibrate and all I can think about is who is calling me this early in the morning? It was a friend from out of state, Tim Chase. Tim asked if I was around the Aurora area as there was a shooting there and he wanted to make sure I was okay.

Tim gave me a bit of an overview of what happened and I caught some on the radio after we talked a bit. By now it has been all over the news and many people have heard of it so I won’t rehash the entire story but for those of you who have not heard, a man took a few guns to a theater in Aurora during their midnight showing of the Bat man movie. He dropped some sort of smoke bomb(s) and entered a theater and began shooting movie patrons twenty to thirty minutes after the movie began. He killed twelve to fourteen people (I keep hearing different numbers when I check the news) and injured fifty some people. Some of the stories coming out are amazing! One is of a guy who took a bullet for his girlfriend, and another is off a sports journalist who avoided a similar shooting in a mall not long ago. One of the wounded survivors has come out as a man of faith who is struggling to deal with all of this but hopes to one day forgive the man who shot him. How cool & amazing are those stories?

One thing Tim said that struck me was not Colorado and not again! For me it is not an event that jars me or upsets me too much but maybe it should. My freshman year of college I left work one night (Chuck E Cheese) twenty minutes before a disgruntled employee robbed the place and shot five employees killing four. I was in state when Columbine happened and every Coloradoan remembers that day.

Shortly after the shooting at Chuck E Cheese, I saw a mugging and called the police and ended up distracting the mugger so his victim could escape on a bus. I testified in court months later and the mugger beat the charges. Delivering pizza I saw more than my fair share of unsavory types and ran into a couple situations that could have been fights, robberies, or worse. I always managed to somehow avoid them or escape. One night I was out for a walk and almost ended up in a fight with four punk kids who wanted to fight but weren’t willing to start it or attack me. I have definitely seen the darker side of humanity. When I say talk about the dark side of humanity I am referring to everyone, other people’s dark humanity as well as my own.

I am not startled by all this as I have gotten past a certain amount of the lies we tell ourselves in society. We believe that other people are evil and not us. I know I was ready to seriously maim those kids who wanted to fight me and I can say to a certain degree I wouldn’t feel much guilt or remorse about it. Doesn’t that mean there is darkness & evil inside me? I will be the first to admit I am no saint. But why does society get evil twisted and forget what evil is? We look at Hitler and think truly evil people are like Hitler. They are well polished, have a tiny mustache, and lead other people to do bad things (I apologize to anyone with a tiny mustache reading this blog. I had to through that in there…there is seriously nothing wrong with having a tiny mustache…unless it smells and things crawl out of it…then it is wrong!). We forget that everyone around Hitler was influenced by him & also participated in kidnappings, and murder, and torture and abuse as well. So the people who worked for Hitler weren’t evil? Of course they were. And society will tend to think the people who said & did nothing while the Jews were killed were good. No those people were evil as well!! They stood by and did nothing to stop evil which makes them accomplices to those crimes.

Society needs to view evil as how the genocide in Rwanda played out. There were very few key players and the evil acts were not done at specific sites, they were done in broad daylight in people’s neighborhoods. Hundreds of soldiers went out and attacked people anywhere they could find them. Those soldiers didn’t have guns so the people they killed did not die quickly. They had machetes and knives and they hacked people to death. It was up close & dirty and took a long time. They did this day in and day out for months and months. That is what evil looks like. It is done by people we see every day and it is up close and personal. It is in all of us and we are all capable of it. Once set off it can go on for months or years or lifetimes.

Sadly no one in our society wants to admit that about themselves. We’d all rather be happy believing we are good and there is nothing wrong with ourselves. That is the beauty of blame & delusion. Because when you spend all the time you have pointing the finger at other people’s faults you never look in a mirror and address your own. It is also delusional because I think most people know they have faults, problems, and evil but they don't want to address them. I do not know the reason why people do this but once anyone avoids dealing with issues they have made a choice. They made a decision for whatever reason and are willing to live with their problems, faults, and evil. They will repeat it again and again without finding a way out. Someone once said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Maybe that makes most people insane, delusional at least and I am guessing most people who make bad choices and avoid their issues are not insane so I am going to believe they are delusional

Later that day my buddy Tim texted me and asked what caused the guy to snap and start shooting people. I responded with some goofy statement that wasn’t very funny. A few hours later I was reflecting on how impatient I can be and how I can be impulsive and driven by my anger or passion which when unchecked can lead me to do things no one would believe I would do. I thought about the darkness inside me and my faults. I should have told Tim that we all have evil in us and we all have faults we don’t want to address. The guy that shot people at the movie theater that day did not address his faults and it cost other people there lives and it will cost the shooter his freedom (he will be in prison system for a while), his reputation, and maybe even his own life.