There's a theory about life that compares it to an echo. When you yell, I love you into a canyon,

you hear, I love you back. When you yell, I hate you into that same canyon, you hear back, I hate you.

What we put into the world is, generally speaking, what we get in return.

People are usually the same.

When you put kind actions into your daily interactions with others, you will generally get kindness bank.

Deal only in anger with others. and anger tends to be the response.

This is why Maggie and I, as teachers, vowed to put as much good, as much empathy, as much love

into this world as we can. We want to think that if we are better, then we can make the world better.

Sometimes, unfortunately, though, the world has ideas of its own.

Sometimes all you give is love, yet you get mistreated as a response.

We hurt, as a whole, when the love we betray is innocence,

when we mistreat a kindness that doesn't question nor betray, the goodness of a child.

Politician Tom Allen said, quote,

I think we have a moral obligation to our children that can be easily summarized.

Number one, protect them from harm.

End quote.

That's it.

Innocent children need adult ambassadors to fight for them, but that protection can't take breaks because danger doesn't. I only wish this a child in our case today had only heard

kind words. I love yous, and it's going to be okay. Instead of witnessing acts of violence and hatred,

harm came uninvited to him one evening in January of 1984. And his family is still searching

the answers to who betrayed the trust of a child,

and perhaps even more confounding, why?

...