Difficulty expressing feelings, values, in difficult times

Being at school is the best. Until it isn’t. This week it was the worst.

I don’t write about politics. It’s not my thing. There are enough arguments, points and counterpoints found in print, online, and on TV. Controversy is everywhere. Shouting heads and pointing fingers.

I don’t write about current events either. It’s too easy to go down that road and end up writing about politics. Yet, on days like today, I have to write something down. Days when the sun is not shining as bright and clouds hang low. Days when it’s hard to wake up and feel good about life in general. I think it is an obligation to write something about what is happening around us and what will happen to us again.

And still, with thoughts of grief and somehow of continued surprise, words do not easily come to mind. Children are dead. Parents are lost. Teachers are living in fear. These seem like simple thoughts but they don’t make sense. It’s hard to write something down that doesn’t make sense.

Many of you live in a small town. In a community where everyone knows your name. A place where going to the coffee shop is a ritual. You know who you’ll bump into when you are there and that’s part of the reason you go there regularly.

Kids feel the same way about going to school. When you are nine years old, waking up early is hard. Going to sleep early is harder. Being at school is the best. Until it isn’t. This week it was the worst.

I don’t know how to talk about this, how to say something that helps or even if that’s something I should be doing. Talking, writing, hoping, praying. Most of us are far away from it but as citizens of the same country, where we say we hold the same values, the same dreams, we feel very close to it.

We are in a place and time in our history, in our country, where anything can happen to anyone. Maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe each one of us can be taken away from our parents at a moment’s notice, in what we think is the safest place in the world. Maybe we are something different than what we preach we are to others.

The world is a big place. Bad things happen everywhere and they happen differently in different…