Newtown

Normally this blog is reserved for insider GMAT/GRE tips and suggestions to make your application more complete. Instead today our minds, and likely yours too, are elsewhere. The tragedy of Newtown is one of the saddest things that can happen to a society. When the killing of innocent children is involved, it seems so, so much worse.

Perhaps it’s because children represent the only part of our world still untouched by life’s inevitable ugliness and the human cynicism that comes along with it; that gleeful innocence that seems to vanish when life demands more of us than we’re prepared to offer.

So when the cruelties of adult life are aimed in a child’s direction, we gasp a little deeper and flinch a little harder. Today we do both.

Though none of us will ever know what it was like for the surviving teachers and administrators in the school that day, to say nothing of the slain children’s parents, we mustn’t let this terrible day go by without recognizing our responsibility as indirect survivors.

I know this may be unpopular to say, but my prayers this morning went out both to the victims of the tragedy as well as the victimizer; both to the surviving family members who were gunned down but also Adam Lanza’s father and brother.

Details are coming out, as expected–much like they did in Aurora, Virignia Tech and Columbine–that the shooter was mentally ill. When I hear that, what it means to me is that the child felt alone. Afraid. Helpless. Victimized. Powerless. ALONE. Say it aloud–ALONE. The word itself evokes its own haunting meaning.

We as a society failed Adam Lanza. In turn, Adam Lanza did what he felt was the only thing left in his power do–insist, in no uncertain way, that we listen to him. That we, at minimum, acknowledge his anguish.

Adam Lanza’s rampage was, without exception, the most gutless of all human acts. Too often, though, it seems like the only resort for some.

How many times this year have we flipped open our laptops to news of youthful rage turned bloody? Friendless in all cases, the perpetrator, we later learned, had severe emotional issues.

We often talk about global warming, planet preservation, recycling, the fiscal cliff, economic recovery and gay rights as the seminal issues of our time, which indeed they are. Forever excluded from the discussion, however, is what I have long believed to be among the primary issues we, as a society, must address—loneliness. It is a human scourge like any other. Ask Adam Lanza. Ask James Holmes. Ask Jacob Roberts.

For now, I don’t want to think of the torment that is sure to greet the survivor’s families this evening. I don’t want to think about what it will be like for them to wake up tomorrow morning. And I don’t want to consider the unthinkable “what-if” scenario that would involve my own child. I don’t want to think about any of it; because it all just makes me tired and angry and empty and sad.

Just so god damn sad.