When the family court judge decided how often Griffan Reutzel would see his 3-year-old daughter after his divorce, Reutzel felt punched in the gut.

"What just happened?" he thought. "It was surreal."

Reutzel, 35, had expected to share parenting 50/50 with his ex-wife after their 2014 divorce. Instead, he got a visitation schedule of one day during the week, every other weekend and every other week in the summer. He said he had been involved with his daughter's life since birth. Now, it felt like his daughter had been taken away from him.

"At the end of the day, (others) don't know how bad that feels," he said.

He didn't have the tens of thousands it could cost for an appeal, which he may not have won, anyway. Reutzel, who works at FGR Mechanical and Liberty Teeth Armory in southeast Missouri, says he felt depressed and discouraged. His mother, Linda Reutzel, decided to investigate why the court seemed to favor the mother in the case. She says she discovered a system of institutionalized gender bias that led her to take on the family court system through the state legislature.

Linda Reutzel, who lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, began driving to state capital Jefferson City every week to meet with lawmakers. She connected with the National Parents Organization (NPO), an advocacy group fighting for family court reforms such as shared parenting legislation. They armed her with research suggesting that children fare better, emotionally and behaviorally, when they spend more than a third of their time with each parent.

Ned Holstein, founder and chairman of NPO, says the standard custody agreement is out of touch with how families have changed. Increasingly, both parents work in the paid labor force. Fathers today are more involved in daily child care than previous generations. In the past legislative session, about 20 states considered some form of shared parenting legislation, Holstein said. The issue is picking up steam in the media and state houses.

In Missouri, the Reutzels helped get a bill passed by the House and Senate, which is awaiting the governor's signature. The bill creates guidelines for parenting plans that "maximize to the highest degree the amount of time the child may spend with each parent." It requires courts to disclose why shared parenting wasn't awarded and provide written findings and conclusions in custody cases. It also prohibits courts from establishing their own rules, such as having a default parenting plan.

In other states, bar associations have objected to bills that may have put victims of domestic violence at risk or limited judicial discretion. The Missouri Bar Association is not taking a position on this bill, which does not apply in cases of domestic violence or abuse.

One legislator questioned Reutzel about whether children would feel the stability of a "home" if they were constantly shuttling between residences. Others have criticized these types of legislative measures as a way for men to avoid paying as much child support. Would a new standard shift the focus away from the best interest of the child to the best interests of the parents?

Holstein counters that shared parenting is in the best interest of the child. Research shows that fathers pay more child support, and more willingly, when they have more access to their children. He fears that lawyers who benefit financially from drawn-out, expensive custody battles are the ones who oppose changing the system.

"The fact of the matter is that most fathers desperately miss their kids" after a divorce, he said.

Linda Reutzel is more blunt in her criticism. All her son wanted was more time with his child, she said. The custody arrangement reduced him from a parent to a visitor.

"Men and women are obviously different," her son said. "But the feelings for a child are as deep on both sides."

It makes sense for the courts to consider that.

The death of a silverback gorilla quickly led to a national referendum on a mother's parenting, a police investigation into her family and an angry mob sending her death threats on social media.

The mother, outed by social media vigilantes, nearly lost her 3-year-old child after a moment of distraction. Since then, she has become the target of those who say she should have been shot instead of the endangered ape.

The Cincinnati police said on Tuesday that they are investigating the family of the preschooler who slipped through a three-foot rail and fell into the moat of the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday. Harambe, the lowland gorilla, approached the child, eventually dragging him through the water. Zoo officials say the child's head banged against the concrete, and they fatally shot the gorilla to save the child's life.

The human gut reaction after hearing this news should be grief and anger at the untimely and unnecessary loss of a majestic creature -- one held captive by humans. It was my instinctive response, as well. I tweeted on Sunday: "It takes considerable effort to scale a zoo's gorilla enclosure. Requires a lot of parental negligence for that to happen."

But I had rushed to this judgment before I had seen the actual barrier or knew much about the parent's behavior in that moment of the child's escape. I'd fallen into that easy trap of casting blame and judging a person in a flash of anger.

Later, I saw a photo of the barrier in question and realized that it wouldn't have taken much for a determined, impulsive preschooler to dash through the moat in the amount of time it would take a parent to turn around and attend to another child in her care.

This is when human higher-order thinking should kick in. It's rational after a tragedy to question if it could have been prevented. It makes sense to question whether a three-foot rail and four-foot hedge was enough of a barrier between humans and 450-pound beasts at a zoo, which has a responsibility to adequately protect both visitors and animals.

And it is that uniquely human ability to self-reflect that allows us to remember a moment when we may have been that parent who looked away for a second while a quick-footed child darted away. We've all likely seen children run across a parking lot dangerously, or through a store, while their parents appear distracted.

Even animals can exhibit empathy.

Those quick to criticize zoo officials and experts for killing the gorilla might pause to consider how they would want those officials to respond if it had been their child or grandchild or nephew who accidentally fell into that enclosure.

"But that would never be my child!" the rationalizing human brain responds. "A 'good' parent like me would never take her eyes and hands off a slippery 3-year-old at a zoo," it says, in that self-soothing, illusion-of-control way. The ability to judge the mistakes of another allows a person a sense of superiority, which can feel like a protective shield against freak accidents like this.

Taking refuge in a social media mob provides more than just an outlet for outrage; there's safety for the accusers in that mob. Together, its members share the sense that their superior judgment and actions would never allow such a tragedy to occur. And in an age where we are confronted daily with how little is in our control, social media offers an anxious subconscious a way to calm itself through blame: The more we blame this other person, the less likely it seems such horrible accidents could befall us.

A petition created on Change.org demands that the child's parents be "held accountable," and more than 350,000 people have signed it so far. A logical follow-up is to ask what accountability looks like in a situation like this. What sort of punishment fits the crime, if one has been committed, in such a case?

For those who blithely said "shoot the mother instead" -- even the gorilla, in its confused and startled state, showed more restraint.

Now, who is behaving like animals?

So much of the background noise in our lives reminds me of worst-case scenarios, chaos and decline.

It's the low-level hum: at work, on the television, in the paper and especially on the Internet. The world we are shown is largely one of conflict and controversy.

There is a chronic undercurrent of something bad happening; an impending sense of potential disaster. Things fall apart, people leave us when we need them to stay, and too many people suffer random tragedies and violence.

In this background gray, which sometimes darkens, sometimes lightens, we have to remind ourselves of the other force that turns this great big sphere on its axis.

In this moment, as you read this, so many things are happening outside the gray. In this very second, these moments are unfolding:

Parents whose hearts longed to have a baby are holding their newborn for the first time.

A man who aimed too far out of his league is gazing at his bride and promising to love her forever.

A daughter is telling her mother she's going to become a grandmother.

A father is hugging his grown son and saying that he's proud of him.

A cancer patient is hearing a doctor say the word "remission."

A teenager has the keys to the car for the very first time.

The ground is shaking for someone getting kissed.

A baby, a spinal-cord injury patient and an amputee are all taking their first steps.

A brand-new business owner is making her first sale.

Someone, who no one believed ever would, is crossing a stage and accepting a diploma.

Someone is sounding out a word and beginning to read.

A writer is finishing a book.

An artist is being struck by inspiration.

A runner is crossing a finish line.

Someone is falling in love.

A stranger is saving another human being's life.

A boss is offering a nervous young adult his first job.

An unemployed breadwinner with a family to support is accepting a new job offer.

A soldier is greeting her family after a long absence, picking up a child and holding her so tightly.

An unlikely 10-year-old is scoring a game-winning goal.

An abandoned puppy is being chosen by a new family.

Someone is being surprised with a cake and a birthday song.

Someone is proposing. Someone is saying yes.

People are dancing -- in streets, at parties, in clubs and in their bedrooms.

A child is showing his parents his best-ever report card.

All of that is happening. Somewhere in this big, wide world, in the time it took to read that. All that elusive, random, commonplace, extraordinary happiness is taking place -- changing people's lives or just filling them with gratitude.

I want to pause and consider each of those scenes unfolding. I want to let myself remember those moments from my own life and appreciate what so many millions of people the world over are experiencing.

We carry memories of our best times close to our hearts, but how often do we take a minute to pull out those pictures from our mind and allow ourselves the gift of reliving them? Of remembering the sights, sounds and smells as vividly as we can?

It doesn't cost anything. And science has shown us that dwelling in the good -- past or present -- makes us happier. The act of recalling, the process of committing to memory these moments, serves us well when the world seems dark.

It's a reminder today, of all days.

Sometimes, love wins.