Sandy Hook Elementary

It was unspeakably horrible. Utterly senseless. Yet speak of it we did, with the hope of making some sense from what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

It’s natural to look for answers, and the fact the twitterverse was abuzz with calls for change is a good thing. Perhaps this will lead to something better, some sort of revolution in the relationship between Americans and their guns. Perhaps, when the media has moved on, nothing substantial will come of this at all.

There is always hope.

President Obama said in his address to the grieving community of Newtown, Connecticut that America “can’t tolerate this anymore.” And for real change to occur, he added, “we must change.”

The numbers don’t lie – a post making the rounds of social media told the cold truth: 10,728 deaths from handguns in the U.S. last year, compared to 52 in Canada, 48 in Japan and just eight in Great Britain - and even the powerful National Rifle Association, which was silent in the early days following the violence, has promised “meaningful contributions” towards change.

But this tragedy is about far more than gun laws. Connecticut has one of the tougher gun-buying bureaucracies in the U.S. and in fact, the killer was recently turned down in a request to purchase a handgun. The weapons were in his mom’s name, which is repulsive in its own right.

The real fear, and this is something we share with our neighbours, is that you can’t legislate against madness. You can never truly understand it either. Making sense of the utterly senseless is beyond our reach.

That doesn’t mean we won’t try anyway.

We all spent the following days soul searching, when the time might have been better spent feeding the soul what it needs: a little love, a little kindness. Dance or sing, if you want.

I spent the day after surrounded by love and children, specifically my 10 year-old son Jake, my now six year-old granddaughter Lauren (today is her birthday!) and the E-Dog, my grandson Emmett, 2. That was my tonic for the madness.

Seeing the joy in their faces as they play and the wonder in their eyes as they just BE, was enough for me to renew my faith in humankind.

I encourage you to do the same. The future is bright for us because the hopes and dreams we all share is there in the hearts and minds of our children.

We can all make sense out of that.