"I was flipping through the channels a few weeks ago and I caught a quote, posted on the screen. It was from a viewer of the local news. This  viewer had wrote in their opinion in response to a previous story. The story was on the most recent violence and shootings in Toronto. They wrote in saying “if our justice system and courts were not so lenient on our youth, then we wouldn't be having all these problems. We need tougher penalties and longer sentences to handle these people.” This statement took me back. Wow! our society is so naive. Look at where we place the blame. It is not the justice systems responsibility to fix these people. It is our responsibility as citizens, as people, as fellow human beings who walk this world together; to fix this issue. This person felt we needed to rule with the iron fist. Anyone who doesn't follow our rules or fit into our society must be locked up. Put them in jail and throw away the key.

We cannot fight hate with hate. For it was hate that created these criminals in the first place. In the absence of love, hate will prevail. Love is our goal. Love is our ambition. It is when we feel that this is being taken away from us, that is when we react and fight to get it back At any cost. We all crave this love, we all strive for this attention and warmth. Those “criminals”, they want the same things you and I do. They want to feel welcomed. They want to feel apart of something. They want the admiration and respect of their fellow man. Do we honestly believe that the gangs were the first place these people looked for acceptance? The gangs were just the place that someone finally welcomed them with open arms. As people they are no different from you or I. The only difference is society has put them on the outside and as outsiders all they have is the gun to enforce their rules. And each member of that family is more than happy to pick up a weapon to preserve their way of life.  For it is that life that has finally given them the feelings they were looking for. The same feelings we all struggle for and long for within us. To me the gun symbolizes how hard these people are willing to fight to hold onto that feeling.

I want to take you on a journey. I want to take you back to kindergarten. Visualize a classroom full of young, spunky three and four year olds. How many of them have a gun? How many do you see living the “thug” life? How many, when asked say “when I grow up I want to be a criminal”? Not one person is born with the desire to hate, the wanting to destroy or the willingness to kill. But then our youth does grow up some do become criminals and some do kill. Why is that? If we are a society and the criminals are outsiders, how did they get there? The kindergarten kids are all insiders but when they grow to adolescents some become outsiders. What happened? At one point or another they get pushed away. We make them feel unwelcome and unwanted. We as adults modeled this behavior everyday as we interact with others and our kids, well they follow us perfectly. As a result we give these people only one final option. We turn them to the last family out there, the family of outsiders, in search of acceptance.

Do you believe that if you grew up under similar circumstances you would be any different from these people. From the way our society treats each other can you expect there to be any difference in the result. When we interact with the people around us we either leave them feeling good about themselves or we leave them feeling terrible about us. We either build love within each other or we foster hate and resentment. With every interaction we have a choice, we can either share a smile and say hi or we can ignore and continue to push away. You want a world filled with respect – show it. You want a world filled of love  – give it. All of our issues on the outside stem from our personal issues on the inside. Pick up a book, read it. Learn its teachings. Educate yourself to become a better you so our children can have a better model.

It seems so convenient and easy, just like the lady on the news to blame others for the problems To say its their fault that life is this way. I'm here to tell you this. Take a look at your hand when you point the finger at someone. For every time you point the finger - there are three pointing right back at you.  Thank you."  by: Paul R.