Thursday night, I was walking back from a work event in the West Village around 9 p.m. My stomach was full of good food and a smile was plastered on my face. I had had a great day, filled with laughs, successes and mostly just plain and simple happiness.
My phone let out an annoying "bing" and I saw a text from my mom.
"There was a terrorist attack in France. Just be careful. U never know if they will do something in NYC. I am worried about u. I wish u would move out of that city. Just worried."
80 people were killed in Nice, France by a driver in an ice truck on Bastille Day -- a day of celebration, good food and plain and simple happiness.
"Eighty-four people -- including several children -- died in the French city of Nice after a terrorist plowed a truck, which was "loaded with" grenades and other arms, into a large crowd during Bastille Day celebrations Thursday night, according to officials and the French president" (ABC News).
This comes only months after that horrible attacks in Paris. And only days and weeks after shootings across the United States.
People talk about gun control. Mental health. Education. Everyone points fingers at legislators and documents that apparently are the key to everything.
But I don't think that's the case.
Killing someone is already illegal. Beyond the law, it's morally wrong. It's morally dirty and haunting that someone possesses the audacity and willpower to end another's life, especially over differences.
I think we have a bigger problem than just pointing fingers at how tight gun control is or what our officials are doing for us.
What about, what are we doing? What are we doing wrong that people have accumulated so much hatred that they get into the driver's seat and mow down people just trying to have a good day, a good time?
It's easy to look at others and say, "This is happening because you are not doing this." But what's hard to say is, "This is happening because maybe I'm doing this."
And I don't know the answer. I don't know how to solve the universal epidemic we have of people killing other people because of differences. How do we stop that? How do we make people less angry? How do we tell those angry individuals that you can exist in a world where someone doesn't have the same beliefs and values as their own? We can coexist, in completely different ways.
When I was younger, I remember my grandma told me about a girl she went to school with that had a deformed hand. No one in my grandma's class wanted to ever hold the girl's hand during recess or when they would walk in the hallways because it was weird, in the words of the kids.
But my grandma told me, "but I grabbed her hand because so what if her hand was different?"
So, maybe it's that simple. Maybe it's as simple as grabbing someone's hand, because your hand is still your hand and their hand is still theirs. We can stand together, but remain ourselves.
You can say "[insert sect of people] Lives Matter," from black to white to all to Jewish to Muslim to you to me. But you know what actually matters? That we find a way to erase hashtags and labels and grab the next person's hand, no matter if it is different than our own.
