HURT PEOPLE..HURT EVERYBODY

Trying to write about the Austin plane crash is probably not the best or most original idea; but when my heart is full of something I want to say...well, I start typing and hope no one's reading. At least I get my feelings out into the world where they can irritate and thus challenge others to come up with better answers, as we live lives in paragraphs, and file our wounds on machines, and grieve together in cyberspace with those we do not know. Here goes...

Although Joe Stack looked like someone I could have gone to high school with, and he even looked pretty cool playing in his band, he was mentally and behaviorally ill.
He was over the edge with financial and relationship problems and, like other suicide victims or perpetrators, he saw no other way out. Totally tragic. We're sad for him, his loved ones and especially for the innocent people he hurt and killed.
Needless to say, but let's say it...
He caused a terrible thing to happen and may have made his "final word" even more destructive with premediatation; that is, packing his plane with more fuel. Terrible-and thank God more people were not killed or injured.
Yet he has caused me to think about a thing or two.
Society has become very complex and it is getting more difficult for people to make a living, pay taxes, generally have legitimate needs met, and have their voices heard by government. Sadly, people who have worked hard and paid taxes all their lives sometimes can't do it any more. They get old. The world changes and they haven't or couldn't change with it. Maybe they get physically and/or mentally sick and can't or won't get health care.
When we're mentally sick, obviously we can't make good decisions or choices and may abuse friends and family who try to help.
Also, we are complicating our relationship history with divorce, remarriage, children and step-children. Not to say this is bad...but it can create pressure and doomed expectations as emotional and financial troubles escalate for other reasons.
Life, for some of us, is long with several chapters, with business and relationship failures that follow us through the decades as people come in and go out of our lives. Eventually, we have have all kinds of baggage. (Somehow Mr. Stack even got a PLANE!)
Our lives can take on complexity-sometimes a LEGAL complexity- that controls our being, when we were intending to take ourselves and family in a better direction.
Can you identify with the notion that's there's no absolute do-over in life?
Just responsibility for what we've DONE!


So, tonight I'm thinking not only about relationships and responsibility, but about taxation and government. I'm thinking how government takes from us then won't give us what we need, especially when needs are overwhelming.
We need to figure out: What do we pay into the "system" in taxes - and what do we get in return? A job? Medical benefits for the family? Clean air and water? A war fought on our behalf? An IRS man at our door pressuring us though we're unemployed? What do we most need? What does the government have a right to demand?
One of my co-workers commented today that the basic problem here is unemployment. If one has employment, paying taxes is do-able, part of the deal of being an American, and some of us would even say it's a privilege to work and contribute to society.

But tonight I'm mostly thinking about homeland terrorist Joe Stack who was probably a very angry/terrified person, and I'm afraid there are a lot of folks like him - hopefully non-violent, but pushed to their limits by a world that not only didn't meet expectations, but did not offer an easy payment plan.
I'm deeply sorry for those grieving tonight; and praying for peace in the human heart and direction in difficult circumstances...Young and old, weak and strong, leader or misfit-we have to find a way to survive together or we may not survive at all.
AND...we have to control our angry, desparate feelings and stay responsible for self and sanity. As I said, life is neither simple nor fair-yet life and love are the greatest blessings I can point to. Two things the IRS shouldn't be able to touch, and can't, if one is thinking clearly.
Going crazy certainly kills both.