What We Focus On, We Become

“What we focus on, we become.”

Words spoken by Darrell Scott, father of Rachel Scott, one of the young high school girls who lost their lives in the horror that was Columbine, eight years ago today.

They are the words he has learned to live by as he has struggled each day to accept a world in which his daughter’s smile no longer greets him. 

They are words Darrell now uses as he and his son, Craig, a Columbine survivor, tour this country’s schools talking about violence and how to prevent a reoccurrence of the day his daughter’s life was taken with 11 classmates and a teacher.

And they are words which struck me with their simple, powerful truth.

As the days are now turning into a week, and the weeks will soon stretch into months and years, it will be easy for those of us not personally touched by Virginia Tech to move forward.

Other news will capture our attention, and the minutia of our day to day lives will fill the moments.  And the heartache will silently sit somewhere in our hearts, hardening yet another small piece of it.

Those who have lost loved ones in the VT shootings, or who live in the town of Blacksburg, will also eventually move forward, although the process will be the equivalent of walking through emotional quicksand.  Each step labored, the ground beneath them threatening to fall in at any moment.  The quagmire of sorrow intent on pulling them under.

What we will all have in common, however, is our human instinct to study, to dissect, to obsess, and to focus.

In the wake of the release of the video and photos of the killer, something strange and wonderful began to happen yesterday.

The international community, not just the immediate families of those affected, stood up and informed the media that he is not what we intend to focus on.  He is not what we wish to see, give voice to, or remember.

Cho Seung Hui was hate, vitriol, poison.

None of which deserve an audience.

Darrell Scott, his family, and the community which surrounds Columbine can serve as an example, a blueprint, a map forward for us all.  They did not allow Dylan Kliebold and Eric Harris to redefine them, to take more than they already had.  They focused on celebrating the lives of those lost, raising one another up, and helping each other take the steps forward into the future.

I have written this week of being “suffused with anger” and “overcome with heartbreak”.  I have felt an overwhelming desire to reach through my TV screen and computer monitor and choke the life out of the menacing face of Cho.  I have felt hate.

I admit it. I am only human, and I more than capable of that destuctive emotion.

But this morning, I have decided to turn my own internal corner and begin changing that focus.  He does not deserve my time.  He does not deserve my energy.  He does not deserve any more of my emotion.

My high school daughter and her friends, so very many states away from where Virginia Tech sits, left for school today dressed in the colors of that university – maroon and orange.  They are determined to join in the Day of Remembrance – and celebrate the lives of those, not much older than they, kids who they did not even know – and they will focus – not on hatred, but on the incredible gift that is life – no matter how long or short that life may be.

“What we focus on, we become.”

I will not become that which pulled the trigger.  I will NOT become hate.

Now you’ll have to excuse me.  I know I have some maroon and orange in my closet and I need to go change my clothes.

Remembering the extraordinary lives of those who left us eight years ago at Columbine, and five days ago at Virginia Tech.  May the memory of their smiles give us strength, and may every good thing about their lives become our focus.

Comments

[Doodles]

Amen.

D.

[Shanna]

My hubby asked me yesterday afternoon if I had seen the videos on line concerning the "thoughts and ideas" of this less than human being. I told him that I noticed that they were being posted for people to look at, however I refuse to watch them. It does not matter to me what he thought in terms of how he was wronged and therefore gave him the right to take so many innocent lives. The only thing I care about is the healing of the ones left behind. And the souls of those innocents that he slaughtered. I also hope that he is in his own personal hell where he will never get a seconds peace, but I doubt that will happen. I feel that he took the cowardly way out and I refuse to keep HIM in my thoughts for very long. Instead I would love to see videos of those that were taken before their time and remember them and how happy they were and what the world has lost due to their passing.

[Audrey F]

Linda,
That is the very lesson I learned years ago. I used to be CONSUMED with hatred and disgust for someone who had done me wrong. One day I realized I was wasting that energy on someone who didn't deserve it. Right then and there, I decided I was DONE. Not mad, glad, or sad, just DONE.