Charles Hart wrote the haunting lyrics and Andrew Lloyd Webber the music for “Learn To Be Lonely.” The words refer to a tragic figure — a fictitious figure — hideously disfigured, abused, and isolated — rejected by his mother — sired by a father who never saw him — leaving him to perform in carnival freak shows, leaving him to develop skills that relate to a solitary confinement — skills that would nourish his descent into evil.

Child of the wilderness
Born into emptiness
Learn to be lonely
Learn to find your way — your way in darkness
Who will be there for you?
Comfort and care for you?
Learn to be lonely
Learn to be your one companion
Never dreamed out in the world
There are arms to hold you
You’ve always known
Your heart was on its own
So laugh in your loneliness
Child of the wilderness
Learn to be lonely
Learn how to love life that is lived alone
Learn to be lonely
Life can be lived
Life can be loved
Alone

In truth, while these lyrics concern a storybook character, they relate to Everyman — every person whose life is foreordained by a childhood of abuse, abandonment or abnormality. Out of this cauldron of despair, however, certain children do survive to carve out purposeful, productive lives as adults. Some become giants. Driven by demons from a dark past, they surprisingly light up the lives of others. They become benefactors to generations. They are members of a splendid, exclusive minority. Their counterparts, also a select minority, also provoked by childhood adversity, are no less successful in building empires; but their impulses have nothing to do with brightening the lives of others. Power is their God. Coercion is their MO. Dishing out their own brand of abuse is their payback for childhood scars inflicted by either suffocating poverty, or beatings, or rejection, or all of the above. You recognize many of these people — the living and the dead. The famous and the infamous. History chronicles their legacies. You see them on the public stage, old and young alike. One of the most recent, Nikolas Cruz, could be called a “child of the wilderness.” Here you see the product of an addicted mother’s one night stand and unknown father. Here you see a person physically abused and intimidated by brother Zachary who sadly was born in prison. Here you see a person who eventually could not conceal his rage. He continually publicized that rage in person and on social media before shooting 17 people in Parkland, Fla. Cruz was a “broken child.” Just as Charles Whitman was in the 50’s and 60’s before stabbing to death his mother and his wife, before randomly murdering and wounding 45 people at the University of Texas. And Blanche Taylor Moore, daughter of a Baptist Minister and womanizer who forced her into prostitution to pay his gambling debts. Her payback for childhood abuse was to feed him and several husbands arsenic, earning her the nickname “Black Widow.” And John Wayne Gacy, Jr., continuously beaten and belittled by a vicious father, was compelled later to sexually assault, torture and murder at least 33 teenage boys and young men. And Theodore Robert Cowell (aka Ted Bundy), born in a home for unwed mothers, never knowing his father and raised by a violent grandfather. All his life, he held a grudge against his mother as he would murder at least 30 young women. And Gary Ridgeway who witnessed inflamed arguments between his parents, was dyslexic and fantasized about killing his mother. Instead, he became the most prolific serial killer in American history. Predictably, in the aftermath of Parkland, parents cast blame — at guns, police, teachers and government.  Yet the people most responsible for Cruz and teenage violence are none other than  parents themselves. Ignorant parents. Immoral parents. Single mothers who invite boyfriends to the marital bed. Drug addicted parents. Alcoholic parents. Absent parents. Promiscuous parents. Profane parents. Parents who funnel Johnny off to institutional care. Parents who choose divorce over children. Parents who blame teachers for unruly children. Parents who are responsible for the inexorable regression of America’s culture and values. Parents — rich and poor alike — are primarily to blame for resentment, rage and violence — not weapons. You will continue to learn about the likes of a Cruz and Bundy. But many more thousands, anonymous and unsung, inhabit gangs and prison. Many more at this moment reside in the incubator of broken homes and families. The vast majority will dig their way out and make a life — some, against all odds. They are the ordinary souls who go about their business of survival — their pursuit of happiness. You cross their lives and they cross yours. Their childhood details, like yours, are locked away in the closet. In memory banks. Not forgotten.  Seldom visited. Except perhaps in those rare moments of revelation. However they are able, in the conduct of an average, well-lived life, average people face their demons. Privately. Peacefully. Alone.