There is a fundamental difference between a martyr and a hero.
There is a difference between being a victim, hiding under your desk and pissing yourself — as one famous “professional victim” did — and making a decision to choose to be a warrior.
THERE ARE THINGS WORSE THAN DEATH. I had a chance to engage that professional victim years back, and I asked him a few simple questions… what thoughts come in the night, in the wee hours when the miasma rises from the swamp and the demons pound at the door? Are you proud of hiding, pissing yourself, while your brothers and sisters died? What is your life worth now? Is it worth living, or do you judge yourself every time you close your eyes?
And when you stand before your Maker, how will you answer for your life?
I do not believe there is a single person here who would not gladly exchange his or her life for the life of one of those kids. I hate like hell that this is the world we will bequeath to today’s children, but that doesn’t make it any less real. If there is a single thing, a single gift, we can give to young people, it is that they have to live in the Real World. If they can hold on to that single truth, they can find their way.
And no matter what, no matter what your teachers say, or the local police say, or even your parents say, if you have to go down, go down fighting.
That is truth.
NUT GRAF: “The move has been widely hailed as an act of heroism. But some school safety experts and psychologists fear it’s indicative of a growing pressure that American schoolchildren feel to neutralize threats at their schools — an unfair expectation that they say sometimes puts students in danger where it may not already have existed.”
