Hi, welcome back everyone, I’m your host Sarah Southwell, founder of GroWise Be Well, a holistic and inspirational lifestyle company for families of all shapes and sizes. GroWise Be Well, empowering you.

Season 3, Episode 2

“Why, Not How”

Podcast Transcript

I have to say I’m kind of heated up about the most recent school shooting in Texas and I am sad, so sad about the tragedy at that school and I think that we should all mourn as an entire race, mourn for the people that lost loved ones yesterday.

I believe that we are asking the wrong questions about that shooting and about really, any shooting, any massacre, any atrocity that happens, we need to be asking and answering why. When it seems like our politicians want to take it as an opportunity to say, “Hell, yes, it was a gun that was used by a person who was obviously sick” mentally sick. 

I will tell you, I’m not a huge gun fan. I want to preface this conversation by telling you all that I’m not really like – I mean, I’m in favor of everybody having the rights to guns, I just am not a huge gun owner myself and I believe that if you’re going to have a gun, you should have to go through training to get one. 

You should have to get a license to get one. You shouldn’t be able to walk in and get one, you should have to go through a process but that’s a different subject and today, I really want to stay focused on the fact that I believe that the atrocity that happened at a school yesterday in is being used by our politicians to take a platform against guns. 

What I’m trying to bring forward here is that guns are inanimate objects. They do not walk themselves into a school and pull their own trigger. They literally sit on shelves, in fact, I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of them sitting on shelves in gun stores right now that are not killing people.

That are not pulling their own triggers, because they don’t and a knife sitting in my knife block doesn’t jump out of my knife block and stab someone. There has to be the human that uses that tool that, that weapon as a means to harm someone else and so there has to be the person acting on the other end.

I feel as if sometimes that in these moments, we tend to want to just ban the things that are used and I really want us to start asking as a society, as a race, I don’t want us to ask how, we know how, in fact, there are multiple how’s of how to hurt someone. I want to ask “Why” Why did that shooter pull that trigger? Why?

It really is not the gun that killed those people yesterday, it is the person and I feel as if we get off target. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make light of it in any way, I do feel like we are getting off-target on trying to figure out how to stop this from happening again. 

Sometimes I feel as if people use these atrocities as their own personal box to stand on to make their point and I’m not sure that it’s really that clear to be able to make a point out of it. I believe that there may be multiple factors at play. That person could have multiple things going on within them or that happened to them prior to their break with reality, with humanity, with compassion.

It’s up to us as a society to look at these situations and try and figure out how we can stop them from happening again and I don’t believe that eliminating guns or blaming guns is the right thing to do. 

I remember this was, you know, I was young, very young kid when some of these other things happened and I’m going to throw them out there and I don’t really remember exactly the names of the perpetuators but there was a man years ago that sent bombs through the mail, the Unabomber. 

Then there was a man who sent anthrax powder in envelopes and so the reason why I bring those up is because, if someone wants to harm someone else and they have this intention of doing so, they will find the means to do it and you know, if someone really wanted to harm someone, scissors in a classroom become dangerous.

I just feel as if we’re looking at the wrong thing. We can’t be blaming inanimate objects for hurting people because they don’t. People hurt people and we’re the ones that use those inanimate objects and bring them to life to do damage, which then makes everyone blame the object.

So, I feel like maybe it’s a bit too messy, it’s a bit too complicated, maybe people want a simple answer and they don’t want to have to dig too deep and they don’t want to have to really uncover the true reason why that person used that inanimate object to commit such an atrocity.

Maybe we don’t want to do the really difficult work of digging in there and trying to piece together some semblance of a plan for how we can make sure that people get what they need in the future to avoid having a break with reality, with humanity. 

There could be lots of reasons, you know? Frankly, I feel like we don’t want to take the time, it’s almost as if we want to mourn and we want to point our finger at something and then move on with our day.

If we truly want to stop this from happening in the future, I really want us to take the time to dig and uncover. In fact, I think someone out there must have been tracking these types of massacres or atrocities over the past 30, 40 years and put together some semblance of variables that added up to these people committing these crimes.

I think it would be really beneficial for us as a species to recognize the parts of their life that led them to that moment and I think that there could be some tie into the chemicals in our food and the chemicals on our ground. 

You know, there could be a tie into violent images on video games and violent images on television and movies and how desensitized everyone is becoming to death and these atrocities because we see them on a screen and everybody likes watching them. 

Well, not everybody but a lot of people do. They’re the box office bestsellers, right? I mean, they’re blockbusters, right? So I think that we have to, as a society, take – we have to take responsibility for what happened yesterday. 

We, as a collective need to recognize that our need to have our lives be easy and convenient and quick and desensitized and colorful and access to everything and fast food and you know, chemicals in this and that and our chemicals on our lawns so it’s perfect, when are we going to take responsibility as a human race for really aiding these people in their demise? 

We are all connected, we are all part of this somehow. And if we don’t like what happened yesterday, maybe we need to start evaluating how we can make changes in our own personal lives that can keep something like this from happening again. 

Is it turning off the violent content on video games, television, and movies and not allowing our young people to watch those images and saying, “That’s unacceptable. I am not going to watch that and if I just really need to watch it, I’m going to watch it after they’re out of the room or they’re in bed.” 

Because it is creating a generation of children who have become accustomed to guns on television everywhere and guns in movies and they’re just normal, right? Shooting and death is just normal and that’s not normal. We’ve allowed it to become normal. 

So I mean, is there a way that we could restrict the usage of chemicals on our lawn. I mean, what can we do personally in our own lives that can have a ripple effect out to the rest of the human race that would then maybe slow down? It would at least discourage these types of events happening in the future. 

I am not saying anybody is encouraging them. I am not saying anybody is actively out there promoting people to lose their mind and hurt people. I am saying that we have to recognize that when you don’t make a choice, you are making a choice. It’s just the way it is, you cannot not make a choice. There is always a choice being made. 

So our actions affect everyone, that’s just the way it is. We share this one planet that is completely encased in this atmosphere and it’s really not an enormously large planet. I mean, there are much larger planets out there. This is not an enormously large planet and even if it was, we’re still breathing the same air that’s ever been on this planet. 

So we are still sharing everything from the beginning, so how do we change the energy of what we share in the future? How do we as a society stand up and say, “Oh, it really, really hurts me deep to my core, my soul is weeping for my part that I played in that atrocity” and I know that’s hard. 

I know a lot of you are going to be like, “Whatever, I didn’t have anything to do with that. I would so not have had anything to do with that. You’re crazy lady.” All right, I mean, you know, you can feel that way. I don’t want to tell you, you can’t feel that way. I am hoping that maybe sometime in the future you could reflect back on the questions I’ve posed today. 

Ask yourself, “Wow, does allowing my children to watch these violent images have an impact on promoting people to make these kinds of movies? Am I voting with my dollar on what kinds of movies they make in the future?” Yeah, we are. Believe me, they will go where the money is and we are the consumers. We ask for the content that we get. 

You may not agree with that but if you take conscious efforts though in your life to put your vote in to make your choice and not be part of the crowd that supports demands and wants, excessive violence in our television and movies and video games, well at some point, it will tip and we won’t have the excessive violence in any of those media choices because no one would be watching them and they will go where the consumer is. 

So we drive it, you may not feel that way. You are not just being spoon-fed this stuff and so I ask myself, can we reduce that? Can we reduce the chemicals because I do know that the chemicals being used in our earth, in our foods are having a physiological effect on our bodies. There is only a certain amount that our bodies can filter out and process out and then the rest builds up toxicity, which can reach an overload and cause us to make poor decisions. 

I also believe most of our food today is no better than cardboard. You may believe that broccoli is good for you but if broccoli is grown in soil deficient of any nutrients, it is no better for you than the dirt that is grown in. So you know, it’s unfortunate that we’re not aware that our soil has been depleted of nutrients and so the food on our shelves, in our grocery stores are depleted of nutrients. 

They are basically just water and fiber, there is very little nutritional content in them anymore unless of course they’re grown on a permaculture farm or an organic farm that uses no chemicals and doesn’t do any ploughing. So anyway, that obviously is a different podcast. Back to the question at hand is, why did that atrocity happened yesterday? We know how it happened, there are lots of hows but why? 

I don’t think it’s a simple answer. I don’t think it can be refined into a singular point. So let’s just keep asking the questions people, let’s keep looking for the answers. As ugly, as uncomfortable as they may make us feel, we can’t stop asking the questions and looking for the truth of the matter and sadly, we have to look at ourselves. 

Ask ourselves how we can change our lives to make sure things like this don’t happen in the future. Is there something we could do? 

So, thank you so much everyone. I really feel strongly about this, I really think it’s just too easy to just point our finger at one thing and call it good and then we forget about it in three months. I mean, I think this is a much bigger discussion. So I hope you’re with me on this one and that you’re going to think about it at least. 

I appreciate you all tuning in and I wish you all a fantastic day. Bye. 

Thank you again for tuning in. If you’ve missed any of the previous podcasts or just want to listen to some of them over and over again, which I hope you do, please go to our website, they’re all there for you and so easy to listen to from that platform, gwbw.com, www.gwbw.com. GroWise Be Well, empowering you to live your best life.