RIP Jo Cox

I never knew Jo Cox nor had the privilege of meeting her, but I understood what she stood for. And  her senseless murder should give us all pause for thought. We may criticise MPs, but they are after all simply community representatives doing a job on our behalf. And when one of them is slain by a member of the community which she served, it brings home the fact that there are risks involved in taking a position with which members of that  community may not agree. Perhaps even more desperate is the fact that Jo was also a wife and mother and as she has done countless times before, she will have waved her family goodbye and set off for another day's work. And like the rest of us, she will have expected to return home to them when that day's work was done. But it was not to be. It serves as a reminder of the randomness of life, and every day when we return home to our own families, perhaps we should reflect on the fact that we have beaten those random odds for another day. For Jo Cox, it was not meant to be. And even though I do not know her family, my heart goes out to them for their lives have been destroyed by an act of random violence. Sometimes shocking events reach into our consciousness and bring us back to earth with a jolt. Today was one of those days.