I’m assuming that most of you have heard of the Las Vegas Shooting. In case you haven’t, Stephen Paddock fired from his hotel room into a crowded country music festival, killing 59 civilians and injuring several hundred others.

There are a lot of words to describe what happened in Vegas: tragic, sad, depressing, the list goes on.

I first found out about the shooting through a Facebook post. A few seconds later a notification for the latest trending news article regarding the incident came up on my phone. A minute later, I saw posts labeled "Prayers for Las Vegas" through my Instagram feed.

Yet for some reason, in response, I feel nothing.

And at the same time, I feel so much.

When I saw these posts, a part of me said: “Oh yeah, shootings, those happen pretty frequently.” I feel awful for thinking this because I know it sounds extremely dismissive and inconsiderate, but I see shootings as something normal now, something that just happens.

I remember at the age of nine seeing various incidents on the news related to guns. I turned to my father and asked him why everything awful that happened was almost always due to firearms. He simply looked and me and didn’t say anything in response. So I just accepted shootings as something that "just happens."

It’s been nine years since that moment and till this day I still have this mentality.

Why?

Because there hasn’t been any improvement or change.

It’s been nearly a decade and mass shootings are still a norm in the United States of America.

And that is horrifying.

It wasn’t until I read a different article about the Las Vegas Shooting that I started to feel something. It was an account from someone who was simply waiting for his flight to take off. He recounts another gentleman desperately trying to get off the plane and the look of sheer panic he had. The author later found out the other person learned that his son was killed in the shooting.

Somewhere towards the end of the article, the author said something along the lines of: “What if on my next flight, I’m the one to discover my child was gone forever.”

After reading the last line, I felt a sense of sheer sadness just wash over me.

Could you imagine just sitting on a plane, relaxed, maybe a little tired but also a little excited for a change of pace, only to discover your son that you spent half your life raising is dead?

Could you imagine as a parent letting your child go out with their friends, because you just want them to be happy, and the next thing you know they’re gone forever?

Could you imagine hugging your mother before she leaves for a business trip, only to realize she’s never going to walk through the front door ever again to hold you when you’re sad and alone?

You don’t have to imagine any of that though.

Because this is America.

This is reality.

On multiple media outlets, I see a lot of different responses to the shooting. Some are calling for more gun control, others are grieving over loved ones, some are trying to protect the right to bear arms, and there are a bunch of different types of statistics popping up and overall a lot of blame being thrown around.

Now understandably, after something as awful as this happened. We need to address the problem and create positive changes to protect people. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be talking about gun control, we should, there is clearly a correlation between the accessibility of firearms and mass shootings. Given the circumstances, it’s a good time to bring this political debate back up.

But I just want to take a moment of your time to shine a spark of positivity in the midst of all this sadness and anguish. To all of you reading this, and especially the family members or friends of victims:

I’m sorry.

I know things look really bad, and they are. All these senseless violence really shouldn’t be happening. It’s upsetting, it’s harrowing, and it’s frustrating because this is an incident that keeps repeating when it shouldn’t be.

But I promise it will get better.

We’re a lot more resilient than we give ourselves credit for sometimes. We are capable of doing better as people, as a holistic society. We have done it before and we can do it again. If we stand together in solidarity, we can protect the people we love.