Another day, another shooting. It's a devastating truth, but that's the world we live in. We've learned to numb ourselves at the loss of life because it's the only thing we really can do.
Between TV shows, video games and the news, we've become so desensitized to death that it hardly seems real anymore. I get it, crime dramas make killer TV shows (no pun intended), but after watching episode after episode of Criminal Minds your mind is somewhere between "this isn't real" and "this is too real." We're faced with death everywhere we look and it has become really hard to let ourselves truly feel loss. Watching the news puts us in the same predicament. How many shootings does the U.S. average in a week? Month? Year? Being able to truly harness that sadness would tear us apart completely. I would be a basket case for sure. Of course, sometimes this plays to our benefit, after all, how could someone handle that much sadness? If we did finally feel the loss of each death we watch all over TV, both fictional and real, maybe we would put an end to it once and for all.
We live in a world where we think it's okay to broadcast videos of people being murdered. We witness the last painful breath they take before they leave this world forever and what do we do? We press "share." How sickening is that? News stations play these videos over and over as a backdrop to their political arguments. We watch this. Our children watch this. We watch these news broadcasts as a family. These atrocities are now small talk at the dinner table. This is what our world has come to and we've accepted it. We live in a world where humanity has become absent, life has lost its meaning.
We live in a world where people think it's okay to take someone's life over something as (in the grand scheme of things) silly as race, sexual orientation, religion or occupation. It's easy to feel hopeless and sad about current events, but most of all, angry. It's enraging to me to think that this is the reality we have to grow up in, that my younger siblings are growing up in. That every time I go to the grocery store, class, a concert, or movie I plan an escape route in my mind just in case.
We've tolerated this vileness for far too long. Let's bring meaning back to the most precious privilege we're given as human beings, let's remember how valuable life really is. Let's stop being more concerned with ones race, sexual orientation, religion or occupation than we are with their family or their beating heart. Let's love one another.
