Imagine preparing one night to go out and dance the night away with your best friends, your family or anyone you may love. You spend hours getting ready, picking the perfect outfit, taking relentless goofy photos of one another to post on Snapchat. You've been waiting for this night out all week only for it to quite possibly be your last.
This past Saturday at 2 a.m., a mass shooting took place at Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida. It was here that became the site of 50 deaths and 53 injured people. Since this incident first hit the news, we have been hit with almost every piece of detail there was. People have begun the hashtag, #prayfororlando and there are people constantly reaching out with stories of their own from the horrific night.
In a CNN article it was written that "Christopher Hansen said he was getting a drink at the bar about 2 a.m. when he 'just saw bodies going down.' He heard gunshots, 'just one after another after another.' The gunshots went on for so long that the shooting 'could have lasted a whole song,' he said."
President Obama even spoke out saying, "We know enough to say this was an act of terror and act of hate, this is an especially heartbreaking day for our friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender."
As I scroll through my Twitter feed, I have seen several people speak on the incident, saying things in regard to gun laws, speaking on how love is love. And in this turmoil, what I find to be the most disturbing is the fact that at the end of the day, these tragedies aren't bringing us together, but they're tearing our nation further apart.
One tweet that stuck with me, in particular, was from child celebrity Cole Sprouse, who wrote, "They want us talking, they want us fearing, they want us arguing, but most of all they want us hating...hating each other and them. Use Love."
It astounds me how un-empathetic we have become as a nation. We have pushed ourselves into such categories that when events such as these happen, we don't view ourselves as humans and people, but we look at each other as straight or gay, white or black, atheist or Christian. Whatever you classify yourself as, whoever you may be when you look in the mirror, try to remember that there are people who are going to bed without their daughter, son, husband, wife, or even their child.
We think we need to be constantly talking about the murderer, but why are we not immortalizing those that were lost in this event? It's time to get off the internet with our prayers and pleas for a better tomorrow, and start to do something about the world surrounding us. And that change won't happen behind a computer screen.
