By Abe Villarreal

I don't write about politics. It's not my thing. There are enough arguments, points and counterpoints found in print, online, and on TV. Controversy is everywhere. Shouting heads and pointing fingers.

I don't write about current events either. It's too easy to go down that road and end up writing about politics. Yet, on days like today, I have to write something down. Days when the sun is not shining as bright and clouds hang low. Days when it's hard to wake up and feel good about life in general. I think it is an obligation to write something about what is happening around us and what will happen to us again.

And still, with thoughts of grief and somehow of continued surprise, words do not easily come to mind. Children are dead. Parents are lost. Teachers are living in fear. These seem like simple thoughts but they don't make sense. It's hard to write something down that doesn't make sense.

Many of you live in a small town. In a community where everyone knows your name. A place where going to the coffee shop is a ritual. You know who you'll bump into when you are there and that's part of the reason you go there regularly.

Kids feel the same way about going to school. When you are nine years old, waking up early is hard. Going to sleep early is harder. Being at school is the best. Until it isn't. This week it was the worst.

I don't know how to talk about this, how to say something that helps or even if that's something I should be doing. Talking, writing, hoping, praying. Most of us are far away from it, but as citizens of the same country, where we say we hold the same values, the same dreams, we feel very close to it.

We are in a place and time in our history, in our country, where anything can happen to anyone. Maybe it's always been this way. Maybe each one of us can be taken away from our parents in a moment's notice, in what we think is the safest place in the world. Maybe we are something different than what we preach we are to others.

The world is a big place. Bad things happen everywhere, and they happen differently in different places. In our home, the land of the free and the home of the brave, bad things are happening to good people regularly. They are happening to kids and to adults. In schools and in churches. Bad things are happening.

I feel a sense of guilt because writing my feelings down can't solve the problem. Not today. But as I write, I think, and as I think, I am starting to understand something that seems like it can't be understood.

It's ok to have thoughts and prayers. I have them all the time and I believe in them. It's also ok to reach out to someone and tell them how you feel. When you're done doing all of that, it's ok to do more. Attend a school board meeting, run for a local office, vote someone in or vote someone out.

Create a support group. Write your congressman. Invite someone to Bible study. Hug a neighbor you barely recognize. Listen to someone that wants to be heard. It's ok to do more, however you know or feel you can do it.

For now, I can write, and think, and try to understand why bad things happen and why they happen so much in a place I keep hearing is the greatest country in the world.

A place where it shouldn't be happening.

Abe Villarreal writes about life and culture in America. He can be reached at abevillarreal@hotmail.com.