The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for...

"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."
~Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

I went traveling in 1999, wanting to see as many places as possible. Scheduled to be gone for three months I took great care in packing my backpack with all of the necessities needed for such a journey. This is a complete lie. I took no care at all when it came to packing. I jammed my rucksack full of things I thought I would need 20 minutes before I left for the airport and it made the bag insufferably heavy. When I arrived in New Zealand I grabbed an airport locker and loaded it with anything I could. I scaled my life down to the bare minimum. "What do I really need," I asked.

I dumped anything with weight. The bag would have been lighter had I left my books in the locker but I couldn't bare to do it. The books went with me.

A Buddhist Bible, Dharma Bums, Fight Club, and The Sun Also Rises were stowed away in my Gregory backpack. I always had something to read. I became very fond of Hemingway after reading The Sun Also Rises. I had read Hemingway before which is to say I had been assigned to read Hemingway once in school. During the school days it was A Farewell to Arms. I'm pretty sure I didn't read it all. I didn't do well when I was told what to read in school. It wouldn't be until I bought a copy of Arms in Brisbane, Australia during the trip that I could finally say I had completed reading it all. Somewhere in Australia, in between The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, I completed Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War, For Whom The Bell Tolls.

I was not alone during my travels. I had planned the trip with my best friend, Al. When we finished our books we would trade them with one another and then talk about them. It was definitely not a book club and our talks were not extensive. Al gave me For Whom the Bell Tolls and it is where the above quote can be found. But it wasn't the first time I had heard those words.

In 1995 I saw the film Seven by David Fincher. I felt ill after leaving the theater but I couldn't help thinking that I loved what I had seen. The story presented an interesting moral dilemma surrounding the idea of vengeance. If given the opportunity to avenge the death of a loved one, what action would you take? Would you spare the person and let the legal system dole out justice or would you impart justice yourself?

This is not a movie review. But it is where I had first heard Hemingway's quote paraphrased. The film Seven ends with Morgan Freeman's character, William Sommerset, offering a memorable thought:

"Ernest Hemingway said, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

Freeman's Sommerset based his assessment of the world on a lifetime as a police officer, completely immersed within the ugly underbelly of a decaying city. He had also just tracked a serial killer, seeing evil up close and far too personal. He was only capable of agreeing with the second part.

I too agree with the second part. But it's the first part that gives me a sense of uncertainty. I see amazing things on a daily basis whether they be through students I work with or through the eyes of my two small daughters. But I have anxiety over the world they are growing in today and will live in tomorrow.

I started this blog nearly three years ago. I created it when Chelsea King, a student at Poway High School, was murdered on the trails I run in Rancho Bernardo. The event affected me in an unfathomable way. Her killer was a registered sex offender who occasionally lived with his mother in RB just down the street from my brother, niece, and nephew. There was this idea of proximity that impacted me but it was much more than that. When Chelsea King's teachers described her, either on the television or at her memorial, I thought of how familiar she sounded. As a teacher, I taught many young people who I would describe in the exact same way. Young people who have their entire lives in front of them and will go on to do great things. Young people should have their entire lives in front of them and those lives should be long and prosperous.

In the aftermath of the tragedy the community rallied together and I did my part by attending meetings that looked at existing sex offender laws and how changes could be made to increase safety for all people, especially children.

As time passes though, and our tears cease, we begin to forget. Wounds must heal and time is the perfect remedy. But I didn't want to forget. So I started this blog. And then I wrote nothing.

It is nearly three years later and the shootings at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut have led me back to this idea expressed by Hemingway. There's probably not a parent who didn't shed a tear over what unfolded in Connecticut last month, I included. Again we are at a crossroads as a country but this time the issue is far more complex than state laws for sex offenders: gun control, mental illness and proper care, and pervasive violence in entertainment to name but a few.

I don't know what the answer is moving forward. But as a parent the one thing I am certain of is that the world is a fine place and it is unquestionably worth fighting for.