stop taking life for granted

This goal has gotten the most cheers of any goals I’ve ever put on the site since joining…and I’ve only written one entry. Seems like I should re-evaluate and figure out what I want to stop taking for granted…in a way, I feel like I’ve done this by quitting my not-me job and moving to another country to figure out the next step…then again, I think I could always use a reminder to not take things for granted. I’ll work on what this means now that I’m in China…

Does anyone remember the line in REALITY BITES where – who is it – says, “Omigod, I just realized, EVIAN is NAIVE spelled backwards” and then Jeannine Garofalo and Winona Ryder start rocking out to “My Sharona” in the gas station quickie mart?

What does that have to do with stopping taking life for granted?

Last night, I was hanging out in a park with a very good friend and his very wonderful son. Some “firecrackers” went off – and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. I mentally calculated: it isn’t the 4th or the 1st…so why are firecrackers going off? Next thing you know, seven cop cars are flying down Broadway and B and I knew immediately – that wasn’t the sound of fireworks blasting in the spring air. I couldn’t shake my feeling of “Holy crap, what just HAPPENED?!” When B drove me home twenty minutes or so later, we saw the cordoned off area and the cops and the throng of witnesses and gawkers, and the empty street where a body had fallen and lost all vitals.

I ask again. Am I naive? I can’t BELIEVE there was a shooting so close to home. But, sadly, I was in Baltimore in late March/early April when another, more deadly shooting occurred seven blocks from my home address. Where do these people get these guns? Why do they shoot them at humans? What’s so freaking bad that you’ve got to take someone else’s life?

Evian. Naive spelled backwards.