Check almost any recent news media and you’ll find stories of an unprovoked, impossible to understand shooting tragedy.  Some imbalanced murderous psychopath kills innocents.  Theaters, colleges, grade schools, malls, fast food courts, recruiting stations, city hall, churches.  There is no place protected from this unimaginable horror.

I tire of the talking heads spouting “fixes”:  One shouts “Gun control!”  The next yells “More mental services” Another screams “More guns”.  The vitriol between the factions is amazing to me. Many good people are willing to politicize these tragedies to “prove” they are “right”.  We are witness to an unfathomable problem in our society and all we do is bicker.

I’m not a flaming liberal.  I am not a curmudgeonly conservative. I am a both. I am neither.

If my dad read that line, he’d spin in his grave.  He was a hard-core blue collar bible-thumping conservative.  And he raised me to be the same. I was told that you must be on one side or the other.  Black or white. In or out. Up or down. Good or evil.  I was reminded to be “hot or cold” otherwise if I was lukewarm, I’d be “spewed out”  (Rev. 3:16). There was zero tolerance for moral relativism.  There were no “situational ethics”– It (whatever it was) was ethical or not! There is no compromise.

With this language and thinking it seemed that there is only one good…. And everything else that is not that is evil.

Life may seem easier when you see a world full of dichotomies and you must pick one and only one.  But real life doesn’t work that way.  There are infinite shades of grey between black and white.  I am not a fan of wishy-washy either.  I am a fan of working to find solutions no matter where the solution comes from.

So maybe the answer is arming a few teachers– And maybe it is smarter gun laws– And maybe it is more mental health checks– And maybe it is __________?  Truth is, I don’t know what the best answers are. But I do know we, as a culture, can’t continue to tear each other apart and find the solutions.

Whenever we ridicule an idea because it came from the other side, we are being stupid. There is no other side. We all breathe the same air. We all drink the same water.  We all face the same fate– (We all become worm food at some point).

There is evil and hurt and pain and fear and ugliness in the world.  I experience it every day.   But good greatly outweighs evil. And just because you disagree with me doesn’t make me evil.

I was sitting on the ledge of a 6 story parking garage trying to coax a “jumper” back to safety.  She saw the world as black and white. Either she could visit her husband (he was in prison) or she was jumping to her death. This is an extreme example of dichotomous thinking. And how does it relate to mass shootings?  Here’s how: If we continue to believe the  all or nothing mentality we usually follow a similar path that the “jumper” followed–that path of irrational thinking.  Hopefully not ‘jumping off a bridge irrational’, but you get the point.

Finding a solution to stop shooting tragedies is not a zero sum game. We can find a solution– if we work together.  BTW the “jumper” did come back to safety– after 3 and a half hours of coaching and talking and negotiating with several rational minded people she elected to get the help she needed.  Imagine how her response may have been different if the crisis team believed the all or nothing mentality.

It’s time to become a better father, husband, neighbor, citizen, police officer, dog owner.  I’ve got to remember the small kindnesses.  I must never forget to be grateful. I must remember to cherish the moments as I experience them. I’ve got to remember to be tolerant…. even to intolerant people…. I must remember, they’re not evil; they’re just  ….  irrational. .

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Dr Jay