Horrible. Unspeakable. Heart-wrenching.
These are just some of the words that come to mind when I think of the innocent people killed in Paris on Friday 13, 2015. It takes a special kind of fucked up to shoot into a massive crowd of people and detonate suicide bombs. My heart goes out to all of those that were killed, wounded, or affected by this horrible tragedy.
But, more than that, my heart goes out the survivors. My heart aches for the concert-goers who played dead while covered in stranger’s blood. My heart breaks for the woman who, one second, was watching a concert and, the next, was holding her husband’s dead body on her lap, wailing lamentations as her world shattered. My heart is crushed for the teenagers who, just on the cusp of life, have been through something so emotionally scarring and life changing that will takes years and years of therapy to fix.
It is easy to sit in a crowded theater and watch some actor on a huge screen die with a bullet wound to the head, but it is completely different to see someone beside you die in the same manner. The survivors of Paris have been forced to recognize the fragility of humanity. The survivors of Paris have been shown what it is like to have everything taken away from them in a second. Mothers and fathers have lost daughters and sons. Newlyweds have lost the chance at a life together. Children have lost their future.
It is easy to think of this unspeakable massacre in the terms of the masses: 129 dead, many more wounded. However, I urge you to understand this monstrosity on an individual level. Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, lovers, and friends have lost their future. The survivor’s lives have changed inexplicably. The families of the dead have experienced a loss more profound than most of us have felt in a lifetime—the death of a loved one.
This has probably made you angry. This has probably made you sad.
It was meant to.
You need to be angry. You need to be sad. You need to be scared. You need to take action. Dante tells us that “the darkest place in hell is reserved for those who maintain neutrality in times of moral crises.”
It was highlighted in Paris, but these types of crimes are not new, nor are they confined to Paris or Europe. These hellish acts of terrorism are becoming commonplace and widespread.
Our world is under attack and, you, dear reader, are a part of this world.
