On Monday (12/17/12), Neil Cavuto closed Your World by summing up the meaning of money (or lack thereof) when compared to the school shootings in Connecticut. As he spoke, photographs of the slain children appeared on the screen.

Cavuto said:

To show you just how profound an effect this school shooting has had on our country,  …look no further than Wall Street.

Traders on Friday more riveted by images out of Connecticut popping up on TV screens on the trading floor, than buy and sell orders flashing on nearby computer screens on that same floor. Trading was very light, and in this supposedly callous capitalist bastion, hearts were very heavy.

And for a brief moment today, mouths were actually silent. A moment of silence that speaks volumes when no one is speaking at all. When they’re just watching, and thinking, and wondering. And in the case of a place like Wall Street, where money means everything, for a brief moment, it meant nothing.

Money powerless to bring back 20 little lives, money useless to help make so many devastated parent’s whole. Money that couldn’t buy a one of them a happy Christmas. Or put even put a deposit on the faintest hopes for a better new year.

There are many things money can’t buy, and among them is peace of mind.

The stark realization of that is one of the more humbling realities of all of this, that the things we scramble for in life, and fight for in life, and scratch and claw each other to gain an edge in life, seems so silly when we are dead and gone. Or folks we remembered just bumping into the other day are dead and gone. And we start thinking more about the fragility of life, and less about the stuff we have in life.

And then we take a look at these little children, just starting life, and we think about this stuff even less. Stuff doesn’t matter.

None of this is to say in this great capitalist society, we still don’t hold our stuff tight.

It’s just that after moments like these, that we hold our kids hands, a little tighter. We distinguish, even on Wall Street, where they know prices, but now and then, appreciate what’s priceless.

It’s too bad it has to take a mass shooting to contemplate on the meaning of life. But Cavuto did a fine job putting things into the proper perspective.