Looking For Answers

Today is the third day since the shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University.

Victims and relatives of victims are flailing about in search of answers to the complex questions of "Why?" and "How can it be prevented in the future?" reports the Chicago Tribune.

"I'm mad," the father of one of the wounded told the Chicago Tribune. "There's a lot of anger, and there's nothing you can do about it. I wish you could go somewhere and get rid of that kind of anger."

Politicians have built careers around assuring voters that there are simple answers to complex questions. Because that is what most people want to believe -- if you're faced with a bad situation, it can be corrected with a simple answer.

It's a tempting notion, of course. If one is overweight, one wants to take a magic pill that will make the excess pounds melt away without requiring the person to eat bland foods and exercise for weeks, months, or even years. If one smokes or drinks or uses drugs excessively, one wants an easy solution that spares the addict the pain of withdrawal and the pangs of desire for the substance.

Sadly, that's not the way the world is. It would be nice if there were easy answers to the complex questions that confront us. But there aren't.

At NIU, the victims, their families and friends are trying to come to grips with a terrible situation and trying to find a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. But they will find -- as others before them have found -- that it's a long, torturous road back to normalcy.

If normalcy can be achieved.

And that road is different for everyone. The twists and turns are different. The obstacles are different. The challenges are different.

Do you recall the fire five years ago in a Rhode Island nightclub? A has-been 1980s band called Great White was performing when a pyrotechnics display got out of hand and turned the club into an inferno, killing and maiming hundreds of patrons, mostly blue-collar types.

An article in today's New York Times reminds readers that many of the victims live with the scars of that night to this day. Some of the scars are visible, some run deeper and cannot be seen with the naked eye.

But long after the public attention to their plight faded away, the victims have continued to seek normalcy. And to seek answers to why it happened.

"Reason has its limits; there are no constructions or formulas that would reshape the universe," writes the Tribune's John Kass today. "No matter how hard we try to puzzle things out, the act of figuring gives no control over life."

There is much truth to be found in Kass' words.

There is a seemingly random quality to life that can lead one to all sorts of fruitless questions. There were well over 100 people in the NIU auditorium when Steven Kazmierczak opened fire on Thursday. He killed about a half dozen people and wounded about a dozen more. Why did so many people, including people who were seated near the victims, escape the carnage with not so much as a scratch?

It was the randomness of life.

In my own life, that randomness often has made its presence known.

Nearly 13 years ago, for example, my parents were out having dinner with friends when an extremely intense storm front moved through the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

My parents and their friends tried to get to their homes in spite of the weather. The storm caused severe damage to property and claimed the lives of about two dozen people. My parents' friends were spared. My parents were trapped by the storm about a mile from their home. My father was seriously injured. My mother was killed.

I often wrestled with the question of why my mother died that night. In the end, I've had to accept that it was simply the randomness of life.

Four years before that, a good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer and died a few months later. He died about a month before what would have been his 30th birthday. And when I was in third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. In both cases, I wondered frequently why my friends had to die so young.

Again, I had to accept that it was the randomness of life.

No doubt those on board the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic who survived its sinking in 1912 wondered why it happened, why so many people died when so many lifeboats were not filled to capacity. Perhaps they carried those questions with them to their graves.

In the aftermath of something as terrifying as Thursday's NIU shootings, perhaps all that can be done is to, in the words of the old song, accentuate the positive.

That father to whom I referred earlier told the DeKalb (Ill.) Daily Chronicle that he didn't know "where the anger comes from in a person that young."

His wife told the newspaper that their daughter has been overwhelmed by the response she has received. "[S]he didn't realize how many friends she had or how many people cared about her. She was surprised.”

But if that family "can't understand the anger that tears people apart," wrote the reporter for the Daily Chronicle, "at least they can appreciate the love that pulls them together."

Let's hope that love sustains them in the days ahead.