Target - good thoughts

I read about an American shooter's hobby being target shooting.
If target shooting is one of your many interests, and you have other pursuits before and after, maybe the negative thoughts are balanced or eclipsed by other activities. But this kid had blacked out windows. He did not see anyone or anything else. He was lacking a group of cheerful friends and family to take him on peaceful pursuits and happy celebrations. The target of his day and thoughts was target shooting. For a mentally disturbed boy, this is the one thing which should have been off the menu. Lots of other good things should have been on the menu. Maybe a small affectionate pet, a skill which did not involve attack, an interest in history, where the enemy is another time and place and not anybody he would see in his daily life, maybe building and creating, growing or gardening, if he was obsessive and focused, a repetitive task such as painting by numbers, if he was bright doing competitions or creating crosswords, giving him some feeling of power over the environment, not destroying but creating.

The aggressor who was once a victim

I just read a story about a killer being executed in the USA. The killer shot a man who helped him when his car broke down. The killer claimed he felt euphoric when he killed because he had been tormented as a child and felt he had got back.
But he got back at somebody else.
Somebody who was innocent.
This happens all the time.
You read court cases where the counsel for the defence says that the accused had an unhappy childhood.
They do the same to others.
The cycle goes on and on.
It would stop if the victims could say to themselves, if the person who hurt me had said, the buck stops here, I would not have been hurt.
So I have read another classic case of an angry person kicking the nearest dog or human about something which happened somewhere else years ago. The killer, who saw himself as a victim, should have relieved his anger at the world by shooting an inanimate target to get rid of his aggression, but not used the target practise as a practise for killing somebody.
The shooter should have left the gun at the shooting gallery. Leave behind the battle and the imaginary victim. He should have had therapy and sworn never to take out his anger on a person who was innocent as he once was as a child. The aggression should be at the aggressor, the photo of the parent who tormented the child (ideally OK if already dead) or some other dead person. But the angry shooter should promise himself and the world that his target would never be somebody who had tried to help him.
The same thing happens with countries.
Wars escalate.
The original problem is long forgotten.
The people are all simply programmed to fight the nearest person.
In the long run we are all dead - but trouble comes much faster and sooner if you go out looking for a fight.

Challenge and chase and capture

A man writes on the internet he is searching for a woman in DC who he met on a previous New Year's Eve. She did not give him her address. Bad sign. But she said find me. A challenge.
With the aid of the internet and newspapers on line he tracks her down. She is now trolled by thousands and deletes all her contacts.
What does he do? Fly to DC with a bunch or roses and a ring? Maybe that would be too much too soon. He should be asking if she is in another relationship and saying he will wait until she is free and if and when she is he has the place for a romantic meal.
She has already been to New Zealand so she has the energy and money to travel that far. But now it's his turn to make a move or wait for encouragement.
Why has she not replied to him?
Maybe she is in another relationship. Either she was all along. Or she has since found somebody.
The problem is he looks anxious and upset in his photo, despite what he says about being a cheerful person. If he'd looked really happy and written how delighted he was to find her, she might have responded equally positively and seen it as a romance.
Especially if he'd said, no strings, let's just meet and either move forward or bring closure to this quest to find you.
But his miserable complaint about 'being hurt before' is a recipe to her and anybody else of the way he expects life to be.