Ugly World

Donis here today. I am writing this entry on the day after the Orlando massacre. There is nothing enlightening I can say. No brilliant insight or suggestions.

When I first saw the news, I was immediately reminded of something my grandmother said to me many years ago.

"I've lived through wars and deaths and upheavals and bad times," she said, "but I've never seen things as bad as this."

That was in about 1972. It seems that human nature never changes, especially when it comes to man's inhumanity to man.

I once heard a woman on NPR relate that her five year old daughter once came stomping down the stairs in a snit and demanded to know why we were ever born if we're just going to die anyway.

An excellent question that should convince anyone that children are deeper than adults give them credit for. The mother said she pondered for a minute before answering, because she wanted to give the girl a meaningful answer, and finally she replied that it was because of all the stuff that goes on in between.

Billy Graham was asked what he had learned about life, and he said that he was just surprised at how fast it goes by. I think of that quite a bit, especially when it comes home to me that not one day more is guaranteed to us. Anything can happen at any time. And even if I live out the rest of my natural life in peace, at this point I have less time ahead than I do behind. I wonder why on earth I ever spend time doing things I don't have to do that I don't particularly enjoy.

Carolyn Hart told me once that she thought the popular resurgence of mystery novels was due at least in part to the fact that at least in a mystery novel, justice is usually done in the end. I like to think that mystery novelists are people of compassion, who are doing what they can to impart to the reader a sense of order and rightness in a world that is messy and incomprehensible and unjust.

Or at least divert them with a ripping yarn.