We send out our thoughts and prayers to those affected. We hold vigils to honor those we lost. We voice our shock at such a tragic occurrence. We share, repost, retweet and reblog news stories on the event to remind every one of the capacity of hate some human beings are capable of holding. We turn the issue political before the families even have time to recuperate from a tremendous loss. Finally, we add temporary profile photos to our social media sites.

Temporary. One week, maybe even two or three weeks later, our profile photos have changed back to the way we set them before the incident happened. We stop sharing. We stop praying and thinking. We focus on the latest controversial celebrity photo on Instagram. In the harshest of terms, we forget. This has to come to an end.

In 2012, the Sandy Hook shooting and the shooting in Aurora, Colorado demanded our attention. We prayed and thought. We demanded change. We moved on. Then in 2013, the Boston Marathon bombing swept the nation. We prayed and thought. We stopped blowing up our friends’ social media feeds. Paris of 2013 was no different, except we felt more powerless. What did we do? We thought and prayed. We changed our profile pics to be masked by the Paris flag. We stopped talking about it. A few days ago, a club in Orlando experienced the terror of a shooting. Less than 24 hours after the attack, my Facebook feed was already filling with people turning the attack into an excuse for aggressive political debates and opinions. Several users added a temporary profile photo with the Pulse nightclub logo. We demand change to our gun laws, and we will continue to demand change, but the only way to initiate change is to move beyond the world of expressing thoughts on Facebook and hurling insults via Twitter.

We need to recognize that simply stating “my thoughts go out to _____ during this difficult time,” does nothing to advocate for change. We need to consider the immense trauma on those directly affected. In Aurora, there may be a group of people who can no longer step into a movie theater without experiencing an anxiety attack. A teacher may never be able to stroll casually through school again after Sandy Hook. Marathon runners in Boston may have lost the passion they once felt for running because they are too petrified to step beyond their front porch. Citizens of France could spend their days thinking, "What if this happens again?" Certainly the LGBT community retreated back into the darkest corners of their minds because their identity has been threatened in a horrible way. The victims of events we don’t even hear about because they aren’t “as big” suffer too, such as the events that transpired in 2015 in Colorado, San Bernardino and Charleston.

We shouldn’t stop praying and sending our deepest condolences to those in pain. I hold no doubt that the afflicted find some reassurance, even if it’s a scant amount, in knowing mass amounts of strangers wish them well and wish they could do more to help. Therein lies the problem: we wish we could do more to help. We say change needs to happen now. After every tragic event, we say it needs to come to an end. We need to check ourselves. I recognize the difficult and time-consuming process of change, but if we expect change to happen, we must reach beyond the temporary Facebook profile photo. We must reach beyond the thoughts and prayers and condolences. We must not stop talking about the events that shake the nation and shake the world.