Let's see, I was in ninth grade and thought I was on the verge of conquering the world. We were still living out in the country. At school, I was playing three sports, a couple of instruments, doing well in school, working different jobs, and I was pretty sure things would keep coming to me pretty easily.
But things didn't come easily, maybe things never came easy and I was fooling myself. I wonder why we don't teach kids how life is hard. How to be grateful for the things we have and to look at it all as good fortune. I always found the story of Job pretty unbelievable, how he could gain everything, lose everything, and then gain it all again - how the loss and gain could ever be called just, but now maybe I am beginning to see glimpses of how maybe the losses and gains are irrelevant (but I'm not sure I'm ready to grasp how these losses and gains are irrelevant).
In the last fifteen plus years I've lived in Kansas, Jersey, and New York. I've traveled many countries, I've earned a couple of degrees, I learned some new skills, I bought a place, I was married. All great events that undoubtedly had their own struggles that I'm somewhat unwilling to go into. I was thinking of this today because at the school I taught, a fifteen year old had been shot and killed this weekend. He was at a friend's house, the kids were playing with guns, the gun got loaded at some point and one boy picked up the gun, aimed it at the back of his friend's head, and shot and killed his friend. The boy may be tried as an adult, the friends may have consequences as well. I could easily play the scene out in my mind - the kids' carelessness and disconnect from danger or consequences. I know I've done plenty of things out of my own ignorance or sense of invincibility, and I'm sure most can think of times we were spared the consequence of our mistakes.
But not these boys.
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