By Lloyd Metcalf

In times when school shootings happen, our leaders are posturing for war and there’s sometimes violence in the streets, we ask ourselves why, but what if we asked “what if”?

Being careful not to jump hard onto any issues related to recent tragedies, I gingerly approach this topic and hope readers are able to follow along. Where would we be if we had no tragedies? If we were never violently shoved out of our comfort zones? Would we still strive to become more, to right wrongs, and to become better people in a better society? Or would we linger in our comfort zones, never testing the waters of change?

One might argue that if there were no tragedy, there wouldn’t be cause to correct things that never went wrong.

We might never have achieved any technological advances if we had to tragedy to learn from. When Challenger exploded, we investigated and addressed safety procedures and fuel seals in rocketry. Many of our advancements have come to exist because of tragedy and loss. Humans advance amid adversity, we divide but also unite. The pain and sorrow of the losses help us assess what has happened, assess the value of our lives and the value of change, and be driven to create new and better things to avoid tragedy, pain, and loss — and bring ourselves to new heights.

Would we fly if we had never crashed? Would we sail if we had never sank? Would we run if we were never chased?

In these trying times as a country and a society, it’s hard to believe there may be a positive to the things that bring us pain, but it’s often that pain that brings us the resolve to not let it continue. Sometimes we need to be sad or angry to recognize when we are happy. To quote Dory the blue tang from a certain movie, “If you never let anything happen to them, then nothing would ever happen to them!”

“What if there were no tragedy and sadness?” A better question might be, “How can we make things better?”

Everyone fails, everyone has challenges; it’s what we learn and how we respond to those things that define who and what we are.