There’s
an inspiring article in the Jan. 29 Washington Post about Seattle Seahawks outside
linebacker Bruce Irvin. Irvin had little
football experience, playing in just three games on his high school team his
freshman year. He was later ruled
academically ineligible and dropped out of high school in his junior year. His mother kicked him out the house and he
moved from house to house, “often settling in those shared with friends who
sold drugs,” according to the article.
In 2007 Irwin spent three weeks in a juvenile detention center on
burglary and weapon charges.
A
turning point came one day when he was 19 and living in a house where drugs
were sold. He happened to be out of the
house when a police raid resulted in his friends being arrested. If he had been there, he too would have been
arrested.
He
was taken in by Chad Allen, a mentor who, seeing Irvin’s potential, urged him
to straighten out his life and take the GED exam. Irvin passed all five parts and enrolled in
junior college, then transferred to Mt. San Antonio College before signing with
the University of West Virginia, where he was a standout football player his
senior year. The Seahawks drafted him in
the first round of the 2012 NFL draft with the 15th overall pick.
Irvin
is quoted by the Post as saying, “You know, I think God has a plan for me.”
Then
there is the apparent randomness that befell Columbia, Maryland, where I live,
on Saturday, January 25th. Nineteen-year-old
Darion Marcus Aguilar entered The Mall in Columbia and killed two workers at a
store that sells skateboarding apparel, then turned the shotgun on himself. The victims were Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Md., and
Tyler Johnson, 25, of Mount Airy, Md.
Howard County (Md.) Police Chief Bill McMahon said police have
interviewed family and associates but have found “no known relationship between
the victims and our shooter,” according to U.S. News. Aguilar had no arrest record, no known enemies. He was described by acquaintances as shy,
gentle and sweet; police say a journal he kept indicated “general sadness” and
that he “knew he was having
mental health issues.''
I think eventually investigators will find a connection between
Aguilar and one of the victims. Even so,
the question persists: why? Is this seemingly
senseless act—the slaughter of two young people in a normally safe, public
place at the hands of a perhaps disturbed teenager— part of some master plan
that we cannot comprehend?
Maybe. Or maybe, as the
bumper sticker says, shit just happens. We
don’t choose the circumstances into which we are born—into a
famine-and-war-torn Sudan or the tree-lined and manicured lawns of an affluent
U.S. suburb. Nor do we choose how we
depart this life. It’s what’s in the
middle that counts. How do we conduct
ourselves and make the best of what we have?
Perhaps there’s a relativistic approach to answering the Order
vs. Chaos question. Bruce Irvin seems to
have been plucked out of a destined criminal life by not being home when the
police arrived and by the providential arrival of Chad Allen. But it was Irvin who heeded the advice,
worked to improve himself and turned his life around. If believing that God had a plan for him
helped Irvin become who he is, maybe the answer is that for Irvin, God indeed
does have it all mapped out.
Who
knows? It’s one of those great imponderables
that, at the end of the day, doesn’t really matter. If there is a plan, we’ll never be able to
figure it out. And if we’re all just a
collection of atoms and molecules crashing around aimlessly, well, we just
crash on. But whichever framework is
correct, what we should focus on is, how can we make this place a little
better?
What
if one of us had played Chad Allen and entered Darion Aguilar’s life?
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