The Wolf is at The Door

Sometimes I wonder how we got in the shape that we are in, the world I mean. Where did we get so lost, step so far off the path, that we have found ourselves lost in some sort of alternate reality from where we were thirty years ago. I am forty nine years old. Not old but old enough to remember a time when people didn’t have to be afraid to see a movie or eat at a cafe’ or go to a sporting event or concert. Somewhere this world has taken a hard left and ended up going down a street that we never intended to travel, where dark, sinister things lie.

I have spent much time considering how we find our way home, to a place where simply living doesn’t come with fear, suspicion and dread. How do you combat those that have no regard for life, theirs or ours? The desire to live is one of the most fundamental and it is that desire that motivates many of our actions. It is why people don’t try to fly off of houses or rear end obnoxious drivers. It is what keeps most of us moving between the navigational poles. Not to be confused with a fear of death, many do not fear death. But the will to live is what keeps you kicking to the surface when life gets tough. How do you reason with or combat those that simply don’t have the same appreciation for life?

Years ago, my young son was attending school when the tragedy at Columbine happened. It was shocking to every parent and it made you pause before sending your child off to school. Since then, there have been several, too many, incidents like Columbine. But, I made a conscious decision that I would not raise my child to be afraid in this world. It is his world and he must feel comfortable in it, respect it but not fear it. That mantra was tested when a few years later a gun was brought to his school, but I held onto my belief that the world is basically filled with good people and some of them make horrible decisions. I put 9-11 in a category of its own and tried not to examine it too much because if I did then my child would surly see the terror on my face and he would never get to grow up with the sense of security that all children should have.

Now I look at him, as an adult, full of a sense of security that can only come from youth and parents that have always told you that the world is basically good, and I wonder if I did him a disservice. Perhaps instead of assurances, I should have been preparing him for the shadows that lurk around the corner, waiting in cafe’s and concert halls, in Paris, the United States, next door? How do we combat an enemy that has no regard for our lives or theirs? God bless Paris and God bless us all. The wolf is truly at the door.