Dearest readers,

Yes it is Friday finally once again,   As most of you are aware by now I’m sure, the morning greeted us with news of a tragedy in Aurora Colorado.

At a midnight screening of Batman a gunman wearing a gas mask, opened a canister of gas and then proceeded to open fire on the panicked theater patrons.  When the smoke cleared the numbers were 12 dead, 55 wounded.  There were children in that movie theater and when the gunman was detained by police, it turns out he is a 24-year-old ,about to be Medical School dropout at the University of Colorado.

He was facing some troubles and for whatever reason, which I don’t even care about, he saw fit to take his frustrations and troubles out and end the lives of innocents who didn;t have one thing to do with his issues.

I should have compassion for him, maybe I do, but right now, my heart goes out to those who lost a loved one, to those who are injured and to all whose lives are forever changed by the actions of one man who didn;t know how else to deal with his crap and took it out in an unthinkable way

Today’s Mental Moment

Besides being about this, it is about something else that I have mulling over all morning about reflection, on our lives and actions, and also how the words that we write here, the things we do on our Fb Page and Social media pages will remain where they are if we are gone and will become the only reflection of us that there is.

I grew up in Colorado, it is where,  if I could go anywhere on earth to live, I would most likely end up.  The place I lived is bigger now and not so much open country as full of people ,but it is still home and I find myself pining to be there in the Spring and the Fall when the seasons would change.  Each had its own special feel and meaning to me.  I have not been back since the summer of 1998 but I feel almost daily as if I am just visiting here awhile and am waiting to go home.

My parents moved here in 1999, the same year as the Columbine shootings.  That was the most surreal experience I had experienced watching unfold on tv up until then and until 9 / 11.  The things that happened in those years were, disgusting display of people’s malformed ideas and …   nevermind that isn;t what I came here to say.

We as writers and bloggers spend probably a bit more time reflecting then others, and our words and thoughts are here for all to see anytime they want to.  Many of us spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of life’s happenings and understand what our purpose and where we are going.

I think reflection on your life is a good thing, because self-awareness is the key to understanding others, and being tolerant and accountable for your actions, thoughts, feelings and view of the world.  With self-awareness we realize we have free will, that we are our own master and even if we believe in fate, we still have choices within those parameters.

We think about our childhoods and how they were unique and delightful, filled with fun and adventure as they should be for a child, or the things that were missing that affected our choices as adults, or the very average childhood and kid that we were.  We look back and see what we feel we missed, and sometimes we can act these things out here on our blogs with our buddies playing along.  Super heroes?  Tag?

There is also the fact that writing is therapeutic and often in a situation that did not make any sense or an event that we know has damaged us but not how, in the writing, we can see the meanderings of the things that got us here.  Once we understand, it is a new level of awareness both self and of others, maybe you are more likely to forgive someone who has wronged you, or yourself for acts you previously did not understand, because upon the writing you realize, they didn’t mean to and neither did you.

Not give  a free pass but let yourself pass beyond that event and move on with your life.

They say that lightening never strikes twice.  No matter what form of God you subscribe to, whether you believe in fate or just the statistical evidence, the likelihood of a person being hit by lightning twice in their life is almost impossible.  Almost.

One of the people at the Colorado movie theater, a young woman named Jessica Ghawi, had been in a shooting massacre at a public place before, had been in the middle of the senselessness and watched it unfold.

She was also a blogger, here at WordPress.

Such is the heartache of life that to learn about a light so bright, it has to have been put out first.  She was shot last night and did not survive.

What is astounding to me, it gave me a chill is that her last blog post talked of a bad feeling she could not shake all that day and then she reflected on the other shooting where she had felt the same thing previously and had been compelled by that feeling to go to safety.  .

I first thought she wrote it yesterday and that was almost too much to take in, but it was written June 5.  Still it is the last thing she felt needed reflecting in words on her blog before her life was snuffed out.

Here is the link to her blog, and the blog post I refer to.  I think after looking around, she didn’t write much but she wrote well and I would have liked to have followed her and known her.

For all that, yesterday I didn;t know she existed and today I know of her because she does not and this is the only thing I will ever know about her.

But my heart is hurting for her, and I have thought of her often today, and I wonder did she feel it yesterday?  Did she have a really bad feeling all day, and what did she think of in her last moments.

She got hit twice by lightening, why we won’t ever know.  But she reflected on the first incidence and what she left for us is a reflection of her.

How do you want to be reflected if you were to not be here tomorrow?

Thoughts and prayers to those in Colorado

To your Mental; State, Whatever it May be

May it be reflective of who you are and what you stand for.