i stood at the back of the darkened room watching picture after picture fade on and off the white screen. voices described the life of the people who's faces we were staring at, but i'm not paying attention to what's being said. i'm wondering why? why didn't anyone ever slow down? why didn't anyone ever take time, even five minutes, to ask these kids, "hey, what's up? how's it going?" and from there perhaps get to know them. we move so fast we somtimes forget that in order to see what's going on around us, we can't be moving at 190 mph. we have to stop. we have to just stop, look around, see what's going on. maybe then we can understand why even though we long to be understood by others, they can't understand us and we can't understand them. because neither of us are willing to slow down and say, "hi, my name is ______. what's yours?" and really mean it. not one of us are willing to take time to know another person. and that's why we're always wondering, "how could something like this happen? what made a person do something like this?" if we want to stop wondering, we have to start paying attention. to pay attention we have to slow down our pace of life.