So much of life is about the state of mind in which you approach each day. If my 21 years have taught me anything, it's that some people spend those precious waning minutes before sleep recounting all the outstanding and memorable things about the day. Unfortunately, there are also some people in the world who instead spend that time recounting what was terrible about their day. They dwell on annoyances and lament the injustices of life's obstacles. Every night, people go to sleep with these mindsets and carry them into their next day.
Monday morning, 33 students at Virginia Tech started such a day. Tragically, they would not have another.
I wish I could say my immediate reaction to this disaster, taking away guns, was a quick and easy fix. The Orwellians who say stricter gun control laws wouldn't have prevented this live in a fantasy world, a world where our rivers get cleaner by dumping arsenic and people grow healthier through smoking.
But blaming guns is only an easy fix. I have also begun to realize it's too easy to blame the lax gun control laws or the entertainment industry or video games or any other scapegoat. It's within our power to change these laws, futilely attempting to prevent violence, but it's also within our power to change our entire perspective on how we treat each other. The trouble is, it's a hell of a lot harder to confront our most troubling and complicated social issues in a direct way than it is to ban guns.
I've heard it said the key to happiness is being honest with yourself in everything you do. The exact motive for the shooting is yet unknown, but I suspect the emotions behind the motive itself are clear as day: the intense, soul-consuming feeling of helplessness.
This column was going to be about my senior-year victory lap. For those of us with only days left in our collegiate tenure, the grass on Bascom Hill is beginning to look a little greener than usual and the chairs on the Terrace seem a whole lot more inviting. But looming on the other side of this month is the frightening idea of the real world.
I wonder how many of those who were killed Monday went to sleep Sunday night with a smile on their face with these same thoughts, reflecting on an entertaining weekend and cautiously optimistic about a seemingly limitless future. I also wonder how many spent their last hours annoyed with their roommate for not doing the dishes.
We go through life making the choice to be one or the other, complacent or annoyed, both taking for granted the delicate fragility of life. It's a choice between a night of dreams and a night of nightmares, but more than that, it's a fundamental approach to life.
I'm not naA_ve enough to claim just thinking happy thoughts will prevent future violence, but it's a start.
Blame whomever you chose for this tragedy, be it the university administration, ""Grand Theft Auto"" or the NRA, but I blame our inability to see optimism even in the blinding darkness of anger, and to help each other do the same.
This is surely our national nightmare.
