Nerve Endings Firing Away

Well compiled. However I don’t get one thing. I may be wrong, but I don’t understand why they have to link a disturbing play with his mental health. I mean, writing gruesome plays does not necessarily amount to describing a person’s mental make up. Yes of course, one can use that in hindsight. Because, if that was so we must shudder at the thought of meeting someone like say, the writer of the Saw series of movies. From what I heard he was enraged at his ex-girlfriend or whatever. Nonetheless, not a good reason to go on a rampage.
Anyway, I guess I am way off the focus of this post. Sad day indeed. I hear arms are more freely available in Texas isn’t it?

And yeah I forgot to mention. I was really pissed with the way reporters went about their business with friends/witnesses of the victims. Their lack of empathy was deplorable. I mean the kind of questions they asked them, can’t they put their hearts above viewer ratings for once?!

Piker, I understand what you mean about judging anyone through their writings and it may have been too Minority-Report-ish to do that. The school did recommend mental help for him and I don’t think they could have done anything beyond that.

His English Lit teacher had in fact isolated him from the class. People snap all the time but I guess, when you have easy access to guns, it makes it a lot different for the lot of us.

Texas had witnessed the two previous shootings; at UT-Austin and at Killen, TX. And probably (hopefully not) that might be the last of it.

Pranav, Orkut has indeed become a connecting factor amongst Indians and has emphasized the social networking aspect. I just hope the media focuses on such stories instead of harping on the hate groups and stalkings.

Bongo, the media jumped on this story just the way it treats any other tragedy. Stupid questions reign – how do you feel, etc. Students were like, my friends got killed…how do you think I felt. I just wish some students would snap back live on camera. Nancy Grace was once rebuked by Elizabeth Smart (the kidnapped kid).

Santosh, actually that wouldn’t be a fair comparison. They can actually put up metal detectors (they do!)and even do a strip search but the question is would you want to do that in an university.

For e.g. tripling the police presence in Central Park would make it a lot safer but then would you like to stroll in a park teeming with cops regardless of how safe it is?

I agree. Keeping guns away and restricted would definitely and quite simply help, contrary to what people seem to be constantly convincing others to believe.

Question Marks
——————-

“This didn’t have to happen”, Cho Seung-Hui said, after murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University.

And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn’t have to happen, if we’d only listened.

But we never listen.

We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don’t try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them.

And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.

Words like “creep”, “deranged misfit” and “psycho” devalue this killer’s humanity so we don’t have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of “how could he have been stopped” are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words “how could he have been listened to” are never considered.

Because we don’t want to listen.

We don’t want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we’re all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don’t fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don’t care to understand anything about them.

This man who clearly needed help, Cho Seung-Hui, devalued himself so much that he called himself “Question Mark”.

There are more “Question Marks” out there. There are millions of them. And if we don’t listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more “Question Marks” every day.

Most “Question Marks” don’t become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call “normal”. They may be someone you know, someone you love.

This “Question Mark” was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.

How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn’t fit in, the one in the corner, the one that’s different? When all we have to do is listen, before it’s too late.

But we won’t.

Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.

To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.

And the “Question Marks” will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don’t listen.

We never do.

—————

http://www.x-thc.com