Ohio Tragedy

The tragedy like the one in Chardon, Ohio is all too frequent in recent years.

Some how, we adults, as teachers, parents, neighbors, and even strangers, need to increase our vigilance for the signs of juvenile aberrant behavior, and to speak up when we see it.

More importantly, we need to be ever cognizant of the reality that we are the prime examples for our children. We set societies criteria through our acts of kindness and through our acts of violence.

It is sad that T.J. Lane followed in the footsteps of his father’s violent past.

We especially need to teach our young that violence, in all its forms, attack, anger, greed, or desire, is not the adjudicator of conflict, as the fantasy of cartoons and movie fiction suggest.

It is the creator of conflict. It is we, as individuals, as families, as communities who must lay down the weapons of fear, that our children emulate, and take up the powerful effective swords of principle, truth, tolerance, and compassion and then be the evidence of them.

The youth of today seek not only a personal and generational identity, as all young do, but deep within them, as in all, they quest for the elixir of transcendence, a feeling of creative grace and accomplishment that precipitates into peace.

The delusionary addictive adrenaline of violence cannot give anyone peace, it can only give them emptiness.