the last thing i am going to say about this
2006-09-17 | 12:33 p.m.

Last night I went down to Dawson College with this guy I've been seeing, to light a couple of candles. Right then, and in the conversations we were having afterwards, I realized one important thing.

There's something that gets lost when we get too wrapped up in speculation about where the shooter went wrong in his life. Something everyone's been dangerously close to overlooking, including me.

Namely this: In the end, we are all responsible for our own choices.

So your life isn't fair? Cry me a river. As a great author once wrote, You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say, oh, isn't it? Sorry. Life ain't fair. In the end, you just have to suck it up and work with what you've got.

I, too, had classmates who bullied me, and teachers who looked the other way. I, too, dislike homophobes and "bible-thumping know-it-alls." The difference is, I don't choose to let my bad memories, and the existence of things I don't like, control my life.

There's a lot of bullshit in the world, and we all have a choice about how to respond to it. We can either step up, embrace the good in the world, and seek to build up the good and minimize the bad ... or we can give up, give in, destroy the good things, and make the bad things worse.

Stacy DeSouza sounds like she was one of those people who engaged with the world and, so doing, made it a better place. I don't know anything about the people still in hospital, but I'll bet that the same can be said about at least some of them.

This city is a poorer place for what's been taken away. And the decision to take, the decision to destroy, was one consciously made. No matter how rough your life is, no one forces anyone to cross that line.

If you choose to respond to the bad in the world by making it worse, you are a weakling, a coward, and a complete and utter piece of shit.

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