'Hopeless, helpless and lost' after the Virginia Tech aftermath

What surprised me most about my reaction to the tragedy was not the deja-vu jolt I immediately experienced, but my complete and utter lack of surprise.

"Here we go again," I muttered, as the news broke. For the first time ever, I found myself numb, weary and broken down.

After the disbelief wore off, we were treated to the non-stop broadcasting of the killer's manifesto. Over and over it played; the sick rantings of a sick mind, sending the message to the next disenfranchised youth that this is how you can be remembered forever. At some point, the media has to be accountable for what it chooses to broadcast ad nauseum.

I shudder to think of the killer's family struggling to figure out how they could have prevented this. But it's not that simple, because hindsight is always 20-20, while what's painfully obvious can sometimes be invisible to the naked eye. We all know people who might "snap" at the slightest provocation, but we're hesitant to say or do something, because in many cases, they're harmless.

But sometimes they're not. There's something broken in people like Seung-Hui Cho. Some human beings are so fragile, so easily damaged… Frantically looking for an explanation that makes sense, we point the finger at the system, the parents, music lyrics, violent video games, but in all honesty, who knows what measure of help –if any-- would have been adequate to prevent a tragedy like this.

One thing is certain: the unfettered availability of guns in the States definitely made this more than just a sick wish in a sick person's mind. NRA pundits were quick to suggest that if students had been allowed to legally carry concealed weapons on campus, this tragedy could have been prevented or at least minimized. Thousands of students carrying weapons on campus; now, that makes me feel safer already!

Let's face it, when the second amendment "to keep and bear arms" was written, it referred to black-powder rifles, not Glock pistols and automatic weapons that can gun down 32 people in record time!

In the aftermath, Cho's family issued a statement, revealing they felt "hopeless, helpless and lost". The painfully awkward words, of a family torn between mourning the son and brother they loved and distancing themselves from the killer they couldn't even recognize, finally brought tears to my eyes.

American poet and essayist Barry Lopez once wrote: "How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light." It's all one can do.