Too Cool

{Markus putting his shades on Molly}

As I write this post, soon after leaving the dentist office, I am filling my mind and my heart and soul with life. I am doing it out of love. Love for my children. Love for the people I am in contact with. And love for the people of Colorado. I was so saddened to hear about the shootings at the theater there, while waiting in my dentists office. As I watched in shock as the news of the day unfolded, I listened to what the psychologist had to say about not telling our children anything about it. They do not need to know, and not to let them watch the news. It produces fear in children and causes them to ruin the present moment. It wastes precious time. It blocks the flow of life.


So I came home to look up something on a blog that I had read. It was about a Buddhist monk and death. The monk said, “Your relationship will end. One day you’ll die, one day your loved one will die. Maybe something happens and you separate even in life…there is no way out of this. It may happen when you are both old, it could happen today or in two years. You can’t protect yourselves from this. But what you are sure to have is the present moment and all you can do is love with all your heart, be kind, be there, care and cherish, and your time together, every second, every day. So when the time comes, you won’t have wasted your precious and rare time together.”

How can we move forward? How can we possibly release some of that fear in the face of such tragic events? I know the only thing powerful enough to dismiss fear is love. Love helps us to do difficult things. Love for our children. Love for each other. Love for our neighbors. Love for strangers. Love for life.

I refuse to ruin this beautiful life by living in fear. Life is too cool to waste moments of joy, moments of life that we do have. Because no matter how much fear we have, it will not stop death. It only stops life.