The murder of an angelic-looking 10-year-old – allegedly at the hands of her mother on the Gold Coast this week – is utterly impossible to fathom.

We can shed tears for Sophie Wang’s stolen future. We can wonder why and when and how this could possibly happen in a suburb built on community. And we can hold our own children a tad tighter.

But before we know it, the countless questions demanding answers will be lost in another cruel act, perpetrated on someone, somewhere.

Just a few days before Sophie’s life was ended, a helicopter was stolen and crashed into a luxury Cairns hotel in the dead of night.

The questions demanding answers in that case remain. But we’ve already moved on.

What will be the catalyst for us to stop for more than a moment and ponder what needs to be done when the headlines deliver atrocities we’d find hard to imagine just a generation ago.

Perhaps 9/11 changed all that by setting a new bar in what is seen as truly atrocious.

Now a murdered mother in a trash bin or a family of young children set alight in a deliberate homicide or other countless stories of savagery are just part of a crime menu that fills our daily news diet.

Everything now has to be bigger, louder, brasher and then, over. Language has to be more extreme, and we have to run faster and fly higher to be noticed. And move on, quickly.

COVID was only four years ago but – after it was over – we relished how it made us stop.

We searched, and found, those silver linings in a pandemic that stole lives, frightened our children, and disrupted normal school and work patterns.

We got to value quiet time, walks in the local park, and board games around the family dinner table.

Shy students performed better being schooled at home. Travelling parents saw their children more. And we looked out for our neighbour.

But now, our fear of COVID has passed too. Vaccine rates have plummeted – with 500,000 fewer Australians fronting up for a flu shot this year, compared to last year.

And that’s despite both the warnings of medicos and the the illness that is filling our hospital beds.

Perhaps this is just a cousin of ‘instant gratification’; that disease, spread by social media, that we warn our teenagers about.

Now everything needs to be done in an instant, whether it’s booking a holiday, buying a pet or selling a lounge chair.

Our politicians talk in three-second grabs, if we don’t understand something – from a crossword clue to a French class, we rail against it, and just keep moving on.

Fast food and fast fashion. We drive faster too. Yell louder. And complain at the length of a queue.

Remember how photographs were taken, only a couple of decades ago?

First we would adjust the focus, because it was not automatic. Then we would snap the photo, before putting the camera back into its case, and away.

That’s because we had to take another 11 or 23 or 35 photos, before we could have them ‘developed’.

But then, once all the photographs were taken, we’d open the ‘door’ of the camera, and take the ‘film’ to be developed, often at the local pharmacy.

Some schools tell this story to their students – and it’s at this point that many teens are incredulous.

Nothing was quick, back then. Things took time. Uploading and downloading had entirely different meanings.

But a week later, we’d return to that pharmacy with two things: money, because we had to pay for the photographs; and a delightful sense of anticipation because each photograph would gift us a memory and perhaps even a surprise.

Patience is now old-fashioned. So is waiting. Perhaps perseverance has had its day too.

But the flip side of that is worth pondering.

If we move on too quickly, we don’t fix what is broken. We don’t ponder the policy that might make a difference next time.

We lose the excitement of suspense and the value of slow improvement. The smell of red roses.

Sophie Wang is just one heart-rending case where we can’t afford to move on. Just remember, she might have been our daughter or sister or granddaughter or niece or friend or student or neighbour.

We need, with a steely determination, to ask why – until we know the answer.

Why is the domestic violence tally rising?

Why, in some states, has the road toll climbed higher again?

Why are so many children falling behind in school?

Why are so many young adulst facing a cancer diagnosis?

Why is a helicopter stolen, and flown into a hotel, while people sleep?
And why is a child murdered when she should be in the safest place in the world. Her home.

Why?