Helplessness

I don't know, but I find myself fascinated by the Va.Tech shootings. It's all so foreign. Motivations. Reactions. It's just all so removed from the ordinary.

And this statement haunts me. It's from a student that hid behind a desk as the shooter came in, shot his professor, and 8 students.

“I prayed that an invisible blanket of protection be placed around me.”

I cannot imagine that sort of situation. Where your life, your very being, is completely out of your hands. It's just utter desperation. I'm not very religious, but in such a situation, where you perceive yourself with no power, what else is there to do? It's hope, at its ugliest. It's hope borne of powerlessness. Hope as a last resort.

I think that's why it's so painful for me to see. It's realizing that everything is gone. And yet, it's still clinging. It's still somehow realizing how bad it is, wishing for something better, and realizing that the outcome is all fate, all happenstance.

How could you countenance that? Life and death as happenstance?