Tears for this world

I can't watch the news, you know? It's not just that I won't, which wold be far more typical of people of my generation. But that I can't. Because more than half the time when I do, I end up in tears. Sometimes it's just a few tears rolling down my cheek - leaking out of the corner of my eye. But other times, the surging sobs I feel welling up in me mean I have to get away from the television immediately, or completely breakdown.

You don't have to be Albert Einstein to realise it probably shouldn't be like this.

No, you may say that I am obviously some overwrought, emotionally delicate child. That may in part be true. But that doesn't take away the fact that something is causing my tears.

Or you might say, most other people can watch this and not cry. But then I would have to say, is that a flaw in them or a flaw in me? If there is violence on our television screens, shouldn't it be making us scared and angry and sick? Or are we now completely desensitized to it, that it simply washes over us like water in the shower, but instead of taking away the dirt, it is stealing the feeling of our souls?

I am not claiming innocence in this desensitization process by any means. I have watched violent movies, and enjoyed them. I have seen images of people shot dead in cold blood and regarded it as entertainment. But when this nonchalance about sin in the fictional world begins to bleed intohow we see the real world, I have a problem. That is where I want to say stop, and look at what you seeing. Think about the implications of what you're seeing.

I started crying last time because of a story about modifying ambulances with stronger restraints. I think most adults would think "Good" and move on. But I kept thinking - what has brought us to this stage, where we have to be so concerned about the safety of our emergency workers, because the very people they are trying to help are wanting to kill them, in the mania of their methamphetamine induced psychosis. Who are these people, who are causing this massive damage to themselves and others? Did I go to school with them? Are they some of the people I see in class now? What do their families think? And how do the ambulence officers keep coming to work each day in the face of all this?