Economic Woes Are No Excuse for Mayhem

Not again.

Another story in the news about how our tough economic times have been met with desperate actions.

An unemployed father in Los Angeles, despondent over his family’s financial hardships, decided that it was better to kill his entire family and then himself than to face the adversities we all face at some point in our lives.

He shot and killed his 3 sons, ranging in age from 7 to 19, his wife, and his mother-in-law. Then he turned the gun on himself.

What a terrible, terrible waste of life.

It may sound crazy to reference a line from a children’s movie, but I LOVE the line in the Willie Wonka remake, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in which one of the old timers tells young Charlie not to worry about money. Why worry over something that there is so much of out there? You can always get more, he said.

True. There is no shortage of money. Nor, contrary to popular belief, is there a shortage of opportunity.

Money and opportunity are abundant and have no end to them.

What there IS a shortage is faith and the nose we USED to have for opportunity.

Our parents and grandparents found opportunity in the dirtiest and most inconvenient of places. And they knew to take it when it was before them. That’s what motivated your grandfather to take a paper route at 4 in the morning when he was 8-years-old.

Granted some of us still know how to find it as well, but it seems that true opportunity seekers are becoming a dying breed. Or at least a threatened species.

This unemployed businessman could have seen that with every adversity there is an equal or greater opportunity.

But he failed to, and now he and his entire, immediate family are dead. GONE. They have ceased to exist in this world because one man failed to see the hope and opportunity right before his eyes, every day, everywhere he went.

A friend and colleague of mine took his life many years ago because of business failings.
My Godmother’s husband took his life over a failed business as well.

We all struggle at some point. Some of us outright suffer. But if you realize there IS a forest for the trees, you will always keep yourself grounded in the bigger picture.

And the bigger picture is that the sun WILL rise tomorrow, as it always has.

Wouldn’t it be a shame to not be there to see it?