By TIMOTHY ROBERTS

A vast empty field lies in front of us all, regardless of our age. The potential we have no matter where we are in life is always at hand before us, and it is up to us to sow our best or our worst in that field.

An amalgamation of our upbringing, experiences and choices all lends themselves to the kind of things we will ultimately sow whether as we will or against our will.

We are at a point in our history as a country where we have some difficult choices before us. None of the choices on so many other subjects matter as much as getting it right on how we address the rising murder rate, and criminality that is choking the life out of our young men (in particular), but affects us all.

I know there is a sector of our society that are saying to themselves – and perhaps to those around them - ‘good riddance, let these thugs and criminals kill each other off.’ But such a view is cold to the fact that each one of these are human lives; someone’s son, brother, father, uncle or friend and a soul that God loves.

Each life lost is a tragedy even though many have been involved in crimes and have even murdered someone themselves (though quite often they are only charged with the crime and not convicted). Each life is worth doing all we can to save.

As we look backwards to the experiences that have shaped our lives, we can see the impactful things that may have led us to be bright, optimistic and outgoing or bitter, reserved and resentful. Many times, it is not just the life event that impacted us but the choices we made in how we dealt with those things. Additionally, our upbringing is dependent on the way our parents treated us and what life experiences they imparted to us and again, how we chose to follow or reject those experiences and inputs into our character’s makeup.

So, in a variety of circles I hear people speaking of all the ways we must address the issue after three straight years of one hundred plus murders, and a year that has started off with as many murders as days of this young year.

‘The justice system is broken.’ ‘The police force is lousy, corrupt and inept.’ ‘Government is not setting the right policies in place to address the issues.’

And while there is truth to those issues existing, the talk centres invariably around treating the issues at the stage where the crime is happening, but if we are serious about truly reversing this course that we are on the discussion needs to focus on the genesis of the problems.

And yes, I get it – it’s easier to complain and blame and focus on what is directly in front of us.

Getting to the root of the things, well that’s more work. It’s also more difficult because we don’t want to see the ugly side of the society we have all contributed to building. We all have our own problems in life that we are dealing with and can’t spend time fixing someone else’s issues.

Again, this is all fine until the violences spills over into our path and affects our lives and places us in fear.

This is our country. This is our society. These are our neighbours, friends, family. We must not shirk our responsibility to all around us and say ‘it’s not my problem.’ If not today, tomorrow or the next day it will be your problem, or my problem.

Our young men are dying needlessly. How do we redirect young lives before they reach this point.

Our every effort should be getting to the root and treating it so that the whole tree can be saved.