h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This was sent to me by a good bud


  ...This is about what we both can do.


Time stopped, and people around the nation, and even around the
shrinking world, clambered for the latest news on the most recent of
what has become a post-modern American phenomenon - the school shooting
in Littleton, Colorado. Hopefully you already know the details: over
twenty people killed, about the same number wounded. The killers were a
couple of high school students armed with sawn-off shotguns, automatic
weapons, pipe bombs, and a bitter hatred for the human race in general.
You heard people call these kids punks, gothics, outcasts, trench-coat
mafia, and probably other much worse and irrepeatable tags of
bitterness. I don't know if any of those names fit the killers, but I
couple of labels hit dead center: they were murderers and cowards. They
chose a path of evil that lead straight to ignoble death. Yes, they
chose.
Everywhere you hear people casting blame, arguing about gun
control laws, parents' responsibility, inadequate schools, on and on.
People, its time to start treating the deeper root cause of this
nation-and-worldwide disease, instead of just the symptoms. Nowhere do
I hear anyone blaming themselves. Well, let me be the first to say that
I blame ME. I went to high school with kids like the ones who just
sent themselves and so many others on a one-way trip to hell. I had a
million opportunities everyday to do something. Hey, I hear what you
are muttering right now, and let me tell you, it WAS my responsibility.
It WAS my fault. I COULD have made a difference. You say that freaks
like those won't listen, wouldn't have listened anyway.
I say that I WAS one of those outcasts, and I could have gotten
to that point of utter hopelessness and hatred of human society except
that someone cared. Someone reached out to me. My life changed because
a few people had the courage to break away from the cold, numbing, cruel
grip of mainstream humanity and CHOOSE TO CARE. I could have done the
same for others. I should have given back the same as was given to me. I
am just as much to blame as if the shooting had been in my school, and
if the kids that are now dead by their own hand were the ones I passed
wordlessly in the hall every day. I know you people have been there, in
that same place, with that same opportunity. Maybe at school, maybe at
work, at church, on the street, in the dorm, wherever you live your
life.
You know they are there, and I am saying that the time has come
to do something. Find them, listen when people mask their hurt and
hopelessness with bitterness and hatred. If you listen you will hear
the cries. If you decide to care, you can change someone's life. Yes,
they have to let you, and yes, they still must choose. But let's at
least give them that choice to reject what indeed exists, that choice to
see what is really there. If we do nothing, there is nothing for them
to reject, but neither is there anything to accept. And you never know
what could happen if just a few people decide to stand up and say ENOUGH
IS ENOUGH.
If you are in high school, choose to rise above what your peers
say about "outcasts." Reach out to them in any way you can. Don't give
up even if you are deferred. People with perseverance changed who I
might be now by being there then. Nothing can compare to that.
College people, there are similar individuals surrounding you,
but don't forget to look back to where you struggled only a few years
ago. Volunteer as a mentor or tutor at a high school near you. Give
back with understanding from your own experience.
Church people, we bear the greatest blame. We claim the love of
the MOST HIGH, and yet ignore hurting people in service, in youth
group,in our lives. SOMETHING HAS GOT TO CHANGE, PEOPLE.
Parents, stop wrapping yourselves in work, fretting over the
acquisition of material possessions, or striving with each other, and
start giving back to your kids the love your parents should have given
you.They are the next world population, they are the future, and they
are dying in despair and the confused hopelessness of adolescence in an
empty and violent world. Stop arguing about things that will burn, and
get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness. I am down here, me,
the worst of sinners, crying out to the God who loved me enough to die
to prove it. Join me and the others around the world who are up in arms
against their own comfortable heartlessness. If you agree with
anything I have said, MAKE THIS PURPOSE YOUR OWN. Then PASS IT ON.
A wise man once said, "the only reason the impossible is not yet
done is that someone stopped short of doing." Your life, your love, your
ACTION can make a difference. THE TIME IS NOW.