OK, two things happened in January that were just so wrong I was just stunned; they were that far beyond my comprehension.

 First, in Kailua, a woman’s boyfriend beats her to death in broad daylight with people watching.  The people watching are excused because the guy had a gun and so there was really nothing they could do.  I can imagine this scene if I were in it and being all heroic like and running up and kicking the guy in the balls or something, but with gun in his hand, that’s a serious increase of the likelihood of dying in the process.  And this is a total stranger.  I think if it were a relative or close friend, my confidence wouldn’t wane so quickly at the sight of the gun and the prospect of being killed, and I bet the same for the people who saw this.  But the fact that the guy did it in the day?  Outside?  In public?  It’s not as though everyone had their eyes closed so they wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup.  By committing this heinous act, he’s sealing his own fate. 

And he’s REALLY sealing it.  It turns out that the girl he just took the life from is from a big family here.  A REALLY big, well known family here.  A family who isn’t just going to take the killing of their sister/cousin/aunt lightly.  And the boyfriend KNOWS this, hence further sealing his fate.  Was this in his head (if I kill this girl, what is the relative likelihood of receiving repercussions from the family?)?  Obviously not.  I don’t understand how someone can get so mad that they’d be inclined to go kick,hit.strangle, the living hell out of someone to the point of killing them. 

Now here’s the second story:  A family lives in an apartment.  In the apartment, there is an 18 month old boy.  The boy’s father is there, and so is the mother’s current boyfriend.  Needless to say, people were around.  In this complex another guy occupies an apartment.  The family has never had trouble with him; in fact, he has even babysat the 18 month old before.

The guy from the other apartment takes the kid (who was playing outside or something), holds on to him, and then throws him from the pedestrian overpass into the freeway traffic below. 

No, this is no joke.  The highway was closed for 5 hours.  This is the one I don’t understand.  Even if the guy didn’t particularly like the kid, can’t you see that ’if I throw this toddler over this overpass, he will die?’  I heard in places in CA they had to wire over the pedestrian overpasses because of the number of people who were jumping and opting to end their life that way, and the likelihood is that all of our overpasses will be caged over now too.  I can understand people committing suicide this way.  I can understand people wanting to throw things over overpasses.  I can understand the desire to do some tagging on an overpass.  But nonchalantly throwing another human being over?  A short time later, the guy even came back to see the effect of what he had done. 

This one is entirely beyond my realm of understanding.  And even worse, what about the two cars that he landed upon?  In a single instant, one person changed the course of many lives.  Even though it had nothing to do with those two cars, that ‘what if?’ is going to linger with them for a long time. 

But what about the guy?  There was talk of his mental instability and whatnot.  Regardless, sane or not, what kind of answer can a person expect to receive when asked “Why?”  This was cold blooded, but it was also spur of the moment.    Reports didn’t indicate he was a serious drug user, perhaps hallucinating that the toddler was Satan and he had to throw him for the sake of all mankind.  What’s impossible to understand is also it’s simplicity.  Guy gets up, guy gets a hold of a child that’s not his, guy throws child to his ultimate death.  What makes this scary is that it seems to lack a motive.

Caroline Myss said that in this new age, many people deny the presence of evil.  That there is no duality of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ anymore.  She says she disagrees with it.  These two occurences put me on her side.  While most of the 6 billion or so people inhabiting this planet fall somewhere along the continuum of this duality, there are some, not many, barely half of a  drop in the bucket when you think about the overall masses, but yes, there are people who are evil, and yes, they do exist. 

Just wanted to let y’all know that everything isn’t always perfect here in ‘paradise.’