There are many sad hearts in my local area this week.

Mid week, a Year 12 classmate of my daughter was stabbed. Hours later she died. Neighbours reported hearing an argument. In a heated moment, a strong impulse was followed and a life was cut short whilst others were altered forever. The sadness in our community is palpable.

In a classroom, a gentle hearted boy gets caught up in the moment and follows an impulse. He does something stupid and is suspended. The act was not worthy of suspension and neither was the boy. He can explain what happened, he can explain how conditions in that room are difficult for him to navigate, and he can articulate what he needs in his environment to learn. But the adults around him got caught up in their own impulses and no one listened. In that brief moment, another life trajectory was altered.

A mother reacts badly to her children being children. Overextended and exhausted she flies off the handle with rage at the smallest things. She moves her children through their day and when alone she sits crying in the car at the mother she has become. She is frightened at how powerful is the impulse to lash out, she is frightened at her inability to stop it, and she is frightened of what she may do. She knows where that impulse could lead.

These scenarios are but a small slice of the instances this week in which children, adolescents and adults in my small part of the world followed a brief, strong impulse, resulting in sad, despairing, and frightening outcomes. We need to understand that strong impulses ….. strong emotions, are not reliable truth. They are warning bells, not invitations. They are signposts that we are about to step into a train of thought that lacks wisdom. They don’t end well.

Photo courtesy of Amel Majanovic @just_amelo Unsplash.com