It's raining today.
Not a big thunderstorm or a brief shower, but a steady, gray rain -- sometimes light, sometimes heavier -- but always rain, soaking everything.
It seems right, after yesterday's tragedy. It would be wrong, somehow, to have a bright, sunshiney day today. The police have defused the first tripwire in the shooter's booby trapped apartment. The living mourn their dead; the wounded begin to heal, if they can, both physically and psychically.
And the man? That young man at the start of his adult life who stood in front of a movie screen and slaughtered as many people as he could? In custody, thank God.
That he is deranged is obvious. But how does that happen, I wonder? What flips the switch in the animal part of the brain and makes a person believe that mass murder is the only way to give life meaning? Drugs? Guns? Video games? Religion? Chemical imbalance?
All over the internet, all over the news, people of all leanings put out their theories. Some say it's because guns and bomb ingredients are shamelessly easy to get; another says that if only everyone in the theater had been armed, this would not have happened. Some say it's because violent video games, TV shows, and movies plant a seed in a mind that's dangerously unstable. Some even blame belief in evolution, or they say that the movement away from Jesus Christ is the cause. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Fred Phelps blames it on those evil gay people.
Really, who knows? I doubt we ever will.
I certainly don't know. I really don't. I can't help thinking that once that switch flips, the deranged person will find a way to do whatever those inner demons say to do. It could be anyone, anytime, anywhere -- a switch flips and a decision is made. The Unabomber, Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech -- anyone, anytime, anyplace -- life is there, life is gone.
So call your parents and hug your children and hold your loved ones close. Keep on living.
The rain has stopped.
