It Begins with Denial

I started writing this yesterday while thinking about the shootings near where I used to live.  I lost the thread and began to write something else.

Today, in the wake of the Colorado shooting, it's fresh in my mind.  We're in the denial stage right now; it's government and regulation that's the problem, nothing innate within ourselves.

Man, we're in for a rude awakening.

It's 2001 and I'm sitting in a living room in Zagreb, Croatia, listening to a couple of listening to a Croatian couple I've met tell me about living through war.

Both were students when the violence was escalating; they did their homework, thought about dating, played games. These Croatians are emphatic on the point that they were normal kids, just like anyone else - they just wanted to enjoy life and prepare for the world of work. War, they said, came to their lives the way it comes to the lives of Canadian boys and girls - through the news. First, they told themselves it wasn't that bad, people were exaggerating. As the violence drew closer to their town, they started to grow concerned but comforted themselves by saying, "it's over there, it doesn't effect me, I don't have to worry." They kept calm and carried on.

When the violence came to city, the calmness gained a tint of panic, but still they refused to accept that anything in their lives would change; the war was in a different neighbourhood. Then, it was on a different street. It wasn't until a bomb blast shattered their dining room window while they were doing homework that they were forced to accept that the war had engulfed them as well. Once it did, everything changed. After the denial subsided, they changed.