Why isn't anyone saying it? Doesn't this ring a bell folks?
Am I the only one who thinks that the boy named Cho who killed 32 in Virginia was a mirror? Showing us ourselves? Showing the world the agony of being cut off from society because he didn't buy in or was in need? Did anyone reach out to him? He was alone. And now everyone is ignoring the lesson that the "madman" has given us. We want to own things. We are an "ownership" society and yet, we do not belong to each other any more. We are alone in our cars, with our i-pods or our cell phones or our macs or our media players or our blackberries. alone. This is the most agonizing pain of all. To be completely alone and to be forced to live side by side with those who do not see you, do not know you and now who see you as beneath compassion, an animal.

I did not know any of the victims. They looked like happy people and I am sure their loved ones will miss them to the end of their days. But it is easy to like happy successful , good-natured people. It is hard to love people who are "cold" or unpopular or disagreable. But regardless, it was the young Cho who was suffering to the end of his life and not the happy young people, who lived good productive lives to the end, (or so it seems).

It seems that compassion is a quality that young people of privilege do not always possess. Perhaps that was the one thing that these young people had "billions" of chances to show to young Cho. Perhaps some people will step forward and tell another story so that we can begin to heal this wound. Making Virginia Tech "safer" does not mean creating another gated community. The US is becoming one big gated community and the more walls we build the more violently those on the outside will tear them down. If we can make people feel that they belong and they are safe inside their hearts as well as outside we may come to a more peaceful place in our schools and places where people work and learn together.