In recent years, there have been countless suicide bombings, terrorist attacks and shootings of innocent people in public places. It feels as if news channels report more about attacks than news about the economy, weather or politics. I hear numerous stories about villages being seized, people being shot at and public places being terrorized. It seems to me as if this world, our world, is slowly collapsing day by day since a new horrific situation is being brought up daily.
Heartbreakingly, the headlines for November 13th were as follows:
“147 dead, Islamist gunmen killed after attack at Kenya college.” - CNN
“Paris attacks: ISIS claims responsibility in 129 deaths” - CNN
“Lebanon mourns 44 killed in Beirut bombings” - Yahoo! News
“Suicide Bomb and Road Blast Kill 26 in Baghdad” - NY Times
After hearing about the numerous shootings and suicide bombings in Paris and hearing about the several other attacks on innocent people across the globe, I was distraught that human morals were once again forgotten. It's mind-boggling that suicide bombers targeted a memorial service in Baghdad, bombed a busy shopping street in Lebanon and held a massacre at a University located in Kenya. It is a saddening reality that people no longer have love for one another but, instead, they have pure hatred and rather than forgetting each other's differences, people let those differences separate them from one another, thus creating never-ending violence.
Millions of thoughts and questions ran through my head after reading those headlines. How could someone do this? How can we let our fellow people commit crimes like these? Why did those innocent people have to die at the hands of those shooters? Or those bombers? All I kept thinking to myself was, “Why do tragedies keep happening in our world?” This attack on Paris, as well as the ones in Kenya, Beirut and Baghdad, were not only on the people who were directly affiliated with the attack, but also on every human being living in this world right now. When someone kills one person, they also kill the rest of humanity. These constant horrific events harm, terrorize and effect all people, even if they’re thousands of miles away. Family members are being killed, children are losing their parents and stereotypes are rising. In every case, these events are worsening and affecting the people of our time and our world.
It is heartbreaking and disturbing that people cannot even attend a soccer match, a funeral, a movie theatre, a restaurant, a bar or a concert without being killed or scared of what might happen. The idea that we don’t know if the person standing behind us or across from us is armed or not is petrifying. The fact that we worry about taking a subway or buying groceries is mind boggling since these are daily activities that we should be able to do peacefully, without any stress. How is it that our world is no longer filled with tranquility but with terror, chaos and murder? We shouldn’t have to feel afraid of living and we most definitely shouldn't feel afraid of one another.
I hope that in 20 years, my children and the future generation will be unaccustomed to the tragedies that we face today. I hope that, in their time, acts like these will no longer take place and that these acts will be baffling to them since they won’t be able to imagine scenarios like the ones we have been seeing in recent years. I hope that when they read through their history textbooks or learn about the disasters we are facing today, they will be confused as to how anyone can act in the ways they’ve been acting. I pray that everything we are dealing with in the present is foreign to the people in the future.
As we all hold Paris in our prayers, we must all also pray for the rest of the world that we are all part of. We also cannot forget about the other tragedies that have taken place in other countries. We all need to grow together to creating a peaceful world by learning to put our differences aside and solely love one another. As Gandhi once said, “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
