No matter how much I try to avoid listening to the news, some things you just can’t manage to not hear about. Things like school shootings, or the recent attacks in Paris.
It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on in the world, but my heart is tender, and I just can’t deal with large scale bad news, which seems to be the majority of what the media is spewing most of the time.
I’d rather focus on things that I can actually do something about, and get busy doing it than allow myself to be bombarded with negativity, sadness and pain.
But sometimes, there is awful news that I have no way of improving, and I can’t not know that it’s happened in my world.
So, when my Facebook wall became flooded with pictures of Paris and prayers, wishes, and blessings heading towards the people there last Friday, I had to see what happened.
It didn’t take much reading to see that it was bad...really bad.
And it wasn’t just in Paris, although that was the most surprising. It was also Beirut and Baghdad as well. Perhaps because those are places we think of as being at war~ not places we think of going on romantic trips to so we can look at art and eat bread and cheese~ perhaps that is why their tragedies did not get as much shock.
But they matter just as much.
I don’t even know what to think, let alone what to say to my kids about this, because at their ages, they will hear too. In the past, I’ve used the Mister Rogers quote about looking for the helpers, and that is always a place to start, although at some point, analytical people want solutions.
But how can anyone understand such madness?
My immediate and most instinctual thought while trying to process, is the same thing I feel today~ surely and strongly in my heart~ that is this:
They’re not going to win.
Whatever they are trying to do, or accomplish~ it’s not going to work this way.
I was watching a clip of Kid President at the World Domination Summit last year, and they were talking about what to do with haters, because we all know that they’re gonna hate.
But huggers...
they’re gonna hug.
These angry people with guns may have struck fear and spread their own pain. They surely have broken hearts, but they will never break all of the spirits they are trying to crush. They will never change of the minds of the people of the world who believe in love and freedom and laughter.
Whatever happened to them in their lives to make them haters, in the end, a-holes never win. Because there will always still be good people in the world who will band together and stand strong and they will carry the people who are too broken to stand and they will not let go.
And that is what I ended up telling my kids.
In the face of a-holes committing such tragedies, the one thing I know is that in the end, they won’t fricking win. Love will always win.
It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on in the world, but my heart is tender, and I just can’t deal with large scale bad news, which seems to be the majority of what the media is spewing most of the time.
I’d rather focus on things that I can actually do something about, and get busy doing it than allow myself to be bombarded with negativity, sadness and pain.
But sometimes, there is awful news that I have no way of improving, and I can’t not know that it’s happened in my world.
So, when my Facebook wall became flooded with pictures of Paris and prayers, wishes, and blessings heading towards the people there last Friday, I had to see what happened.
It didn’t take much reading to see that it was bad...really bad.
And it wasn’t just in Paris, although that was the most surprising. It was also Beirut and Baghdad as well. Perhaps because those are places we think of as being at war~ not places we think of going on romantic trips to so we can look at art and eat bread and cheese~ perhaps that is why their tragedies did not get as much shock.
But they matter just as much.
I don’t even know what to think, let alone what to say to my kids about this, because at their ages, they will hear too. In the past, I’ve used the Mister Rogers quote about looking for the helpers, and that is always a place to start, although at some point, analytical people want solutions.
But how can anyone understand such madness?
My immediate and most instinctual thought while trying to process, is the same thing I feel today~ surely and strongly in my heart~ that is this:
They’re not going to win.
Whatever they are trying to do, or accomplish~ it’s not going to work this way.
I was watching a clip of Kid President at the World Domination Summit last year, and they were talking about what to do with haters, because we all know that they’re gonna hate.
But huggers...
they’re gonna hug.
These angry people with guns may have struck fear and spread their own pain. They surely have broken hearts, but they will never break all of the spirits they are trying to crush. They will never change of the minds of the people of the world who believe in love and freedom and laughter.
Whatever happened to them in their lives to make them haters, in the end, a-holes never win. Because there will always still be good people in the world who will band together and stand strong and they will carry the people who are too broken to stand and they will not let go.
And that is what I ended up telling my kids.
In the face of a-holes committing such tragedies, the one thing I know is that in the end, they won’t fricking win. Love will always win.
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