[Insert best Hollywood movie preview voice] Dark on a Monday morning the man lay there in his bed unprepared for the silent torture he was about to endure!  Like a ticking time bomb the alarm clock read 4:59a, with one more tick, and….

…and it’s 5:00a!  Time for me to get up and motivate myself to get some sort of physical activity!  Oh, you can stop reading this with a Hollywood movie preview voice!  Although there are no Hollywood cameras filming my morning wake-up routine and how my silent watch alarm gets me to move my butt out of bed, imagine what your scene would look like when you wake up?  Would it be a comedy?  A love story with your pillow?  Or a horror film?  Whatever the case, I want to share a thought I had while watching the news one day and how I think the Hollywood movie industry could maybe make a difference.

Every morning my wife and I typically have the local news channel playing on the television.  Usually having the news on allows us to focus primarily on what we really want to know about, the weather.  Aside from that, we really like when the CBS This Morning show does their “your world in 90 seconds” spot at 7:00a.  Between those two main portions, we also catch stories that spark our interest and catch our eye.

The news channels always try to seem up beat with their commercials about how you should start your day with them and how they’ll make sure you get the news you deserve.  In some ways, I consider it to be an upbeat pulse.  However, as the newscast plays out, it’s typically all the bad things that are going on in our world and doesn’t really seem to be all that uplifting at all until the weather man says, “today’s forecast, blue skies and 75°!”  Feel free to change that statement to your ideal temperature!

Since the news is filled with so many discouraging stories, I have a full basket of options to choose from.  I could pick from the lovely candidates running for office, the battles that continue overseas, or maybe how some lunatic opened fire in a movie theatre or school.  It is the last topic I mention that I want to put some thought around.  It is an issue that can affect us all and it is one that I can never quite wrap my head around because of all the innocent people that fall victim to it.  When you have a gunman shooting up a theatre or blasting children in a school, it really isn’t any different then a suicide bomber overseas.  In either of the situations, lives are lost and that’s something I’m sure we would all like to see less of.

I wish I had an easy solution for all of this and I wish I had some sort of a psychology or neuroscience degree to offer up maybe a more sound solution, but I don’t.  What I do have is an idea.  That’s it.  My idea may have a trillion reasons why it won’t work and I can fully accept that, but Thomas Edison had a ten thousand ways that didn’t work for him and rather than consider it failure, well, you know what happened.  So bear with me as I share my idea and I’d love to hear what you think, no matter your opinion, I’d just like to hear your thoughts on this.

As I listened to a news story about a shooting, I, like many people, begin asking, why did that person do that?  What was so bad in their life that they reached that point?  Sure I could easily chalk it up to the fact that they may be insane or they have a screw loose.  Usually they have some flavor of a vendetta and in their mind it is a logical reason to carry out their attack.  Others may just have a disgusting fantasy they want to play out and that’s where my wheels are turning.  Is it just living out a fantasy for some people?

We are continually entertained by movies and as you watch a thriller you are sucked in waiting for what happens next.  An although I’m entertained, after watching the movie I realize, what sick mind came up with this plot?  The amount of detail it takes to plan out each scene and think about how that all ties into the storyline, that’s a lot of planning!  Which in the mind of some real world shooter, don’t many of them go to great lengths taking time to plan their attack?  Ok, maybe some just snap and there really isn’t any rhyme or reason, but some do.

As my wheels turn about these two separate worlds of, Hollywood dreaming up the next blockbuster to knock us off our seats, or the person secretly planning an attack on innocent lives, it begged two questions.  1) Could Hollywood sometimes be the cause of why people do what they do based on what they see?  2) Could Hollywood also be the solution to this problem?

Let’s assume that the reason someone wants to carry out an attack is because it gives them some sort of high.  They’re willing to go through with it and know that they could die.  They may also anticipate seeing this destruction on television since the news will cover it.  You have to agree, we know there are people among us in this world that have that fantasy.  So what if Hollywood could let them have their moment?  What I mean is, what if Hollywood could let them act out their scene as if it were the real thing?  They would then have footage to watch that might satisfy their crave and on top of that, no one gets hurt!

Like anything else, I realize there are consequences to this as well.  Depending on how strong the urge is for a person, maybe watching their scene played back to them is a short term fix.  Maybe it satisfies them and maybe it doesn’t.  I’m guessing the latter part would be true.  But what if it did work?  Heck, what if Hollywood found some really good actors in the process?  There is probably a good chance that someone who is planning to shoot up a public venue is not working on their acting skills or looking for an acting career.  But imagine it did give them the relief and it put the thoughts in their head to rest.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?

All this is, is an idea.  A thought.  Nothing more than to get some discussion started on maybe an idea you might have of how to stop events like these.  I know many people would argue to just take away guns altogether, but I think we all know that this would only make guns more of a problem.  It’s like being under the age of 21 and wanting to drink.  Kids find ways to drink even though the law says they can’t.  If you take something away, people just want it more.

As I wrote this article, I thought that it was crazy for me to even share this idea.  However, relating back to the news, I saw this segment Baby Role Playing, and thought, if people are doing this [baby role playing], sharing my thoughts around an idea isn’t that bad, especially when it aims to solve a problem, not create one.  Once again, this baby role playing thing, just another saddening, disheartening way that the news is getting my day off to a great start!

If there is nothing else you take away from this random thought of a post, remember this.  Ideas are worth sharing, because some of the greatest inventions or movements started with just that, an idea.