Nice, Paris, Brussels, Lahore, Istanbul.
Dallas, Orlando, Pittsburgh.
Bombs, guns, trucks.
Every month, every week, every single day there is a new tragedy. New lives lost. It happens so often, so quickly, so right before our eyes, that the bitter novelty of tragedy has worn away and been replaced with gruesome expectation.
"74 lives lost today."
"50 lives lost today."
"5 lives lost today."
The numbers remain abstract. To try to humanize the senseless tragedies, we create hashtag campaigns. But #WeAreParis can only last so long before we must #PrayForLahore.
At some point, humankind's capacity for cruelty becomes so exhaustingly sad that even changing our profile pictures or hashtagging becomes banal and meaningless.What do we do when this happens? What do we do when social media solidarity campaigns don't mean anything anymore?
We must go into our communities. We must address the pain and suffering existing in the backyards of our neighborhoods and the gutters of our streets. In every community in America, there are children born with drug addiction, homeless people, starving children, underprivileged children in need of tutors, at-risk youth in need of mentors, abused women in need of counselors. Around every street corner in every city there is someone broken.
Spending Saturday morning at our local soup kitchen will not heal the genocide taking place in Syria. Spending time with the lonely elderly will not feed the starving Venezuelans. Building a home for a poor family in West Virginia will not shelter the hundreds of thousands of homeless refugees.
But it is all still something. It is all still worth something. Every act of kindness, every act of love brightens the light of hope in this world, which has been harshly dimmed by recent man-made tragedies.
We must encourage each other to be the change we wish to see in the world. When we feel exhausted by the suffocating sadness in the world and the deafening cries of pain, we must find strength in building each other up. The human heart can only stay warm and unbreakable by displays of human kindness, generosity and compassion.
