The Connecticut School Shootings: Forcing Us to Put Our Problems in Perspective
Last week’s unbelievably repulsive school shooting in Connecticut left over two dozen people dead, many of whom were children. The national horror has forced all of us introspect and put our own problems in perspective.
If you’re struggling to get Social Security disability benefits in North Carolina, for instance, or striving to compel a reckless or a negligent corporation to compensate you or your family for serious harm done, the shootings obviously don’t “take away” your problems or make your struggles any less real. However, they do drive home the point that our time on this planet is short, and the forces that work on us are often unpredictable and malevolent.
All of us are on a mutual quest for clarity. We need help from other people to understand the rules for filing a Social Security disability claim, for instance. We also need less technical and more emotional help with issues like how to deal with one’s sense of guilt and shame following a workplace injury or how to deal with tragic, epic losses that seem purposeless and just so sad.
It’s the American way to “try to fix things” by engaging in tactics — to process towards a resolution or at least towards some clarity with respect to our problems. There is definitely a time and place for action and for planning. However, there is also time for reflection. There is a time to sit back and just appreciate your blessings. Yes, you’re struggling. Yes, life has been difficult and perhaps ferociously unfair and tragic.
Yet the human spirit is surprisingly resilient.
People can bounce back from the most epic of tragedies. Witness the heroic work of people like Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, or anti-apartheid champion, Nelson Mandela, in South Africa.
It’s a sad beautiful fact of the human condition that we cannot “rewind the clock” and get back time, energy, and physical stamina that we once had. However, if we can appreciate the blessings of the present and focus on what is possible not what “once was,” then maybe we can all begin to reclaim our humanity a little bit.
If you want to talk about your Social Security disability case, please call the Law Offices of Michael A. DeMayo for a free consultation.
