There but for a week or so, go I

8 days ago, I was standing at the Virgin America check-in counter at LAX. Nothing dramatic happened.

Today, the people who were standing in that very spot had something awful happen, and they could do no more about it than I could have done if it had happened last week.

Of course, today’s tragedy had nothing to do with me, and it’s only the hard-wired need to make patterns out of randomness that prompts me to consider today’s shooting in the context of my own experience… it feels much more visceral than a tsunami in the Pacific, for example, or even a meltdown in Japan, even though those events are far worse on many measurement scales.

There is so much going on in the world, good and bad, that we’re close to something momentous every day. Maybe not national headline momentous, but still, people are born, die, and everything in between, all around us, every single day.

Whether I was ever there or not, and in spite of the bravery and efficiency of the security response, another mass shooting is another stupid waste of blood and treasure. I hope we can change the laws or the rules or the technology or something so that we can talk about almost anything else at the water cooler next year.