This past Friday I helped put together a semi-surprise party for one of my best friends that I have met in college. She was expecting to meet just myself and another friend for dinner, but she came into a room of around 20 people who truly care about her. She turned the ripe age of 19, and I hope that her day was everything she could have possibly wished it to be.
Sunday, one of my best friends since second grade will be turning the infamous age of 21. He will soon be able to legally drink, gamble, and even rent a hotel or car. He will truly have all of the privileges of an adult, and it is honestly a little odd to think about him as an adult. I can still picture us horsing around in elementary school.
If you combine their lifetimes, then you get forty years, thousands of smiles, and millions of memories. It is crazy to think that all of those experiences come from just two people -- two people that I consider myself very fortunate to have met. Two people out of over seven billion on this world that have made a world of difference in my life.
Plus, it is not like these two are the only friends I have. I am blessed to have a host of people around me that I can rely on for almost anything. Each of my friends mean more to me than I could ever hope to articulate, and I reckon that most of the world’s population is a friend to someone like my friends are to me.
For me, my friends are almost everything, and I cannot picture losing one of them. I have lost people that I look up to and respect, and I have lost family members. However, I have yet to lose a close friend. I cannot imagine what that pain is like or why someone would ever wish for another to feel that loss.
Yet it seems like every time I turn on the news or even log into Twitter that I am confronted with the fact that someone, somewhere has willfully removed others’ friends from this world. One man in Nice, France just killed 84 celebrating people by running them over with a truck. Another man in Orlando took the lives of 49 individuals who were just trying to have a good time in a nightclub. In Dallas 5 police officers were killed simply because of the badge they wore. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile lost their lives on what was an otherwise normal day for them.
That is a total of 144 people. That is 144 people who will not celebrate another birthday. 144 people whose countless friends, parents, siblings, and children lie in anguish at the loss of their loved ones. If you are religious, then that is 144 people made in His image that had their lights extinguished far too early. If you are not, then that is 144 people whose only chance on this world was snuffed out. No matter how you look at it, it is tragic.
But if you watch the news you do not see this loss of life portrayed as a tragedy as often as you would think. As soon as the dust is clear both sides split up and head to their political pulpits. We explain their deaths in terms of statistics and let their lives become eroded in headlines.
It is unavoidably depressing, and it just shows that we do not value human life.
That is what this all boils down to. We no longer respect each other simply for the miraculous fact that we exist. We no longer value life, and this cycle of violence will only continue because of that.
In fact, I would almost guarantee that another tragedy will take place before this gets published.
