How easy it is to lose track of what is truly important in life! Recently, I found myself squabbling over procedures and protocols with a colleague. We both had contrasting opinions about how something should be done. In the middle of arguing about who was right, my colleague posed the following question: “I can see you’re getting worked up about this – is it worth it?”

Reflecting on his question now, I think my colleague had received an e-mail news alert or seen an online news headline since our disagreement had begun after lunch. I was too preoccupied trying to prove I was right to have paid attention to the day’s news. Only when I returned home and turned on the TV did I realize the poignant perspective my colleague had offered on our personal clash in light of the conflict others had endured that day. I learned of the shootings and multiple deaths at Virginia Tech while watching an April 16th network news broadcast.

The TV commentator summarized the day’s events, calling the incident the worst school shooting in U.S. history. For a moment, memories of Columbine High School students running from their classrooms replayed through my mind. I didn’t dare imagine a more gruesome or horrific crime. Yet it happened. At the time of this writing, police continue to investigate why a gunman would shoot and kill more than 30 classmates. As I watched wounded students carried from their classrooms that night, I thought back to my colleague’s question and my own worked-up feelings over a meaningless conflict.

Any resentment I held melted. I quickly answered silently, “No, it’s not worth it.” As I drove past the U.S. flag later that same evening, I realized that it had been lowered to half mast. As of the last day of April, the U.S. flag will have been flown at half-mast for one reason or another 1 in 4 days so far this year. This month we’ll see at least two more days when flags will be flown in such remembrance.

So regardless of whether it’s to honor a past president, fallen friends or valiant veterans, these flags should remind us all of the value of life and its opportunities, despite its sometimes unfair brevity. I’ve heard of and read about dairies where unresolved conflicts in the milking parlor have spilled over into the community, resulting in murder.

These incidents are proof that disagreements can be found just about anywhere, even on a dairy. Yet conflict doesn’t have to lead to killing. Let’s allow this most recent tragedy to remind us all that carrying on conflict is not worth the fight. May we truly honor those for whom our flag at half mast flies by living so that we seek the pursuit of happiness, not revenge.  PD