social bar beating, a mother's reaction.

This story really bothered me yesterday...

Talk about entitlement. How is it that a man thinks he is entitled to another human being? Because that's what it is, right? She didn't give him what he thought he was due so he taught her a lesson. I wonder if he felt like a bigger man after he broke her face and left her lying unconscious on the bathroom floor. Was it his first time doing this? Will it be his last?

Why does this story bug me so much? I have two little girls. Sometimes it feels like I'm raising them in a war zone. How do I avoid this paranoid feeling? I have to not read the news too much. I will not watch televised news at all. I pick and choose and read what people forward to me. As a mother I literally can't take in every child that goes missing, every child that is abused, the scenes of destruction and violence that certain children have to witness or be a part of. What's more, the female targeted crimes, they just hit closer to home, being a woman and having to raise woman. It's tiring. And it's not just the kidnapped and/or raped/molested children. It's the stories of the women made to be victims because there is no human decency or respect. The stalked, the raped, the harassed. A man takes over a school at gun point and chooses only the girls to hold hostage and execute. A man fights with a woman at her place of work and goes so far as to kill her and himself in the elevator. A man places a Craigslist post for a rape fantasy to get even with an ex girlfriend. A man takes a young woman from the sidewalk/the bus stop/her driveway/the schoolyard/her bedroom and keeps her locked up for years doing with her what he will. I'm not even going to bring up the sexual slavery, Juarez or places in Mississippi where many black women go missing and no one cares.

So what do I do? I have to make my girls feel safe and secure but at the same time aware enough to defend themselves. I want them to have a good childhood as long as possible; loss of innocence happens fast enough in our society as it is. So I do the worrying where they can't hear or see, after they go to sleep, when they aren't with me. Having children is like ripping out a small, warm, vital part of you from deep inside and letting it loose on the world, naked and fragile. It's amazing how you feel when your children are threatened. I never cared about someone outside myself until they came along. There is a fierceness inside me now, thanks to them. They make me want to keep fighting. If I was on my own I would consider the option of giving up. With no responsibilities it's easier to check out. One can look at the world and feel so overwhelmed and just be okay with saying, "fuck it."

Can you believe the Dalai Lama is twittering? His last two tweets have been one my mind.

The first is this, "Love and kindness are the very basis of society. If we lose these feelings, society will face tremendous difficulties." Pretty self explanatory, right? Sounds simple enough. Riiight...

The second, "To meet the challenge of this century, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility." Now this one sounds a little more tricky to me.

Universal responsibility. WTF? The majority of people cant even take responsibility for themselves. They are so busy telling other people what they can or cannot do all the while neglecting their own responsibilities. Imagine a world where everyone focused on making themselves better and leaving the word a better place than when they found it. What a concept! In this day and age it seems more peopele are more concerned with being he with the most toys. Does no one think of the butterfly anymore? We are all connected. Any seemingly insignificant little event changes the picture as a whole. Is everyone here so very near sighted that they are incapable of seeing past themselves?

I'm beating a dead horse here.

Go out and practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.