Waiting One Day
Fifteen minutes before my "The Dark Knight Rises" showing began, people a few hundred miles away were being shot. A lone, masked gunman entered their theater through the emergency exit and proceed to murder twelve of them, wounding fifty others. It's all over the news, and it's horrific.
I believe that the vast majority of us are good, and want only good things for each other. We recognize the darkness within ourselves, our potential to do evil. The defining struggle of each of our lives is rising above it.
And then something like this happens, and those words feel hollow. I still believe those words, but I must also acknowledge the existence of monsters and madmen in our midst, horrible human specimens who see a large gathering as an opportunity to wreak harm.
When I got up this morning after four short hours of sleep, Sandra hugged me and told me the news. In Colorado this morning there are sons and daughters who went out to see a movie, and who will never come home to those hugs.
I'm still going to review The Dark Knight Rises for you. Just not yet. My review will not focus on the tragedy and horror wrought by one abysmal soul, but I cannot put those things out of my mind yet.
The review will have to wait a day. We all need time to process something real before escaping into other worlds.
[Moderator's Note: Please do not abuse the commenting privilege by posting political statements. It is offensive to those who mourn, and to those of us who mourn with them.]