Well said; indeed.
For those of us who grew up in the often romanticized as "blissfully wholesome" decades post WWII (50's-70's), we recall the sudden genesis of the "milk carton kids". We realized the collective paralyzing fear as the 80's ushered in so-called "helicopter parenting" in response to the wave of cable news stories about far away missing, later found assaulted, raped, tortured and some decapitated, kids.
The ripple-effect goes well beyond the perpetrator, the victim(s), the community and even a nation. The entire planet can rapidly be compelled to forever change by a single, brutal act of violence.
As I try to balance this extreme negative with anything positive, as difficult as it is under the circumstances; it is true that violent crime has fallen nearly in half since it peaked in the mid-70's. But still at a grave emotional/psychological cost. So many innocent lives given for us to learn the hash reality of human suffering, and so many adventurous childhoods sacrificed. Our kids may be safer, yet they are still not safe.
Which is why it's so vital that we all remember how many good people there were in this situation. All the wonderful people who joined those search parties, knowing they may encounter the stuff of nightmares, and yet they stood, arm in arm, hoping against hope to find this child.
The dog walker who immediately sheltered this child with her body, literally putting her life on the line knowing that he had already brutally murdered two people to take this child, and yet she took that child in her presence and put her life on the line for a complete stranger.
The family that sat for a tense half hour waiting for LE to arrive, putting themselves at risk of death to shelter her until help arrived. Someone else's child and they protected her, offered her a blanket, warmth, shelter, safety, food, water, anything she wanted.
LE who arrested this man, walked into the belly of the beast and confronted him and took him into custody.
And let's not forget the tired and bedraggled LE who wouldn't give up, who got her name, face and story out there so the entire country knew who she was.
And us, each of us...how many are on this site??? Thousands of us, who cried, cheered and cared about this child, a child we will probably never even meet let alone know, we cared. You cared, I cared, about someone we don't even know. Measure that empathy, that love, that essence of human kindness against that one miniscule mess of a human and you see that it really is a wonderful world.
