Perhaps it’s these kinds of tragedies that finally begin to move the great iceberg of change.

I was driving around this weekend trying to make sense of yet another shooting rampage, this one even more tragic and senseless than the last. Not surprisingly, nothing much came to me until my radio tuned into Katy Perry’s Wide Awake, which jolted me out of my thought matrix. She sings:

Yeah, I am born again

Out of the lion’s den

I don’t have to pretend

And it occurred to me that change rarely happens until the last straw is pulled, rock bottom is hit or in this case—another lion is let out of its den to wreak havoc on the innocent. It’s not for a lack of empathy or compassion—that I am sure of. It has more to do with the great big wall of resistance we tend to build around ourselves that bleeds into the culture at large.

As humans, we like the status quo and we like to feel safe.

Why rock the boat when things are manageable to some degree? But truly, it’s not until we can no longer justify things that we tend to take a leap into the unknown.

Take Katrina, the hurricane that should have ended all hurricanes still didn’t light a fire under us to address global warming. Apparently, it would take another storm, one that would bring New York, New Jersey and Wall Street to its knees, to stir up enough momentum to bring the issue front and center—perhaps bringing about new policies nationally and even globally.

A shooter takes aim at a U.S. House of Representatives rally—startling. Another opens fire at a movie theater— troubling. Most recently, one shoots up a classroom of youngsters—unimaginable! And there you have it—enough is enough—time to start a national conversation.

So what if we didn’t all have to wait so long?

What if experiencing the unthinkable was no longer the thing that moved us out of this deep rut we are in as a country?

Hang on to your hats, perhaps it’s these kinds of tragedies, one right after the other, that finally begin to move the great iceberg of change that we’ve been waiting for!

Hopefully once it gets moving, it will not only bring honest change but melt some hearts along the way.

Vera Snow finds the mystical in just about everything but is particularly mindful of it when it comes to pop-culture. Visit www.verasnow.com to learn more.

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Ed: Stephanie V.

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