In just one week our world has been hit with two tragedies: the mass shooting in Dallas, TX and the terror attack in Nice, France. Both of these tragedies were caused by senseless acts of violence. Innocent lives were lost and taken way too soon. Many lives were changed forever whether it was from the loss of a loved one or an injury they sustained from the attack.
Just within the past seven months there have been 179 mass shootings. This number does not include all the other tragedies that have struck our world already this year; terror attacks, other shootings in schools or on army bases. It almost seems like every time we turn on the news something else has just happened. I will admit the other day when I got the news notification on my phone about the attack in France my first thought was, “oh look another attack.”
These tragedies are becoming normal occurrences to us and expected. We are just starting to see them as the way life is right now. We are taking our lives and shaping the way we are living around these tragedies. How many people are now going to be on the lookout anytime they go to see fireworks for a truck that may come barreling through? How many kids are going to run multiple drills every school year on what to do if there was an active shooter in the building? How many people are going to be on high alert whenever they go out to the club or to the airport or even walking down the street? Do we really want to live our lives in this sense of fear?
This fear and these senseless acts of violence are starting to take over and control what we do. This should not be the case though. We should be living our lives without that fear of possibly becoming another one of those innocent victims.
There is so much hate in our world today that is driving these acts and that is not right. We need to figure out a way to stop all this. Stop the hate. Stop the violence. Instead of looking at who is to blame we should be focusing on what we can do to make sure nothing like this happens again. We need to be present and proactive. We need to make sure we know what is happening around us and realize that even if something happened half way around the world there is still a chance it could happen right in our backyard. We need to start making that change we want to see in the world. I know that this all won’t go away or stop overnight. Change takes time, but we are slowly getting there by talking about what we can do. We need to seriously start taking action and making these changes one step at a time without violence. We need to work together to make a difference and be there for one another. We need to stop accepting this as normal.
What we need to do is have hope and faith. Have hope that we can put an end to all this and faith that the human race can become one again. As Craig Sager recently said in his ESPY acceptance speech, “If we don’t have hope or faith we have nothing.”. We need to believe that we can make the world a better place. We need to have kindness and compassion for one another. Tolerance and acceptance of our differences. Be aware of what is going on. But most importantly we need to have love because that is what is going to drive out this hate.
It saddens me to be writing something like this, but this is just what is going on around us. I have hope and faith though that within the next few years this will start to change. Because seriously do we really want the younger generations growing up in a world like this?
My thoughts and prayers goes out to anyone who has been affected by any of these horrible tragedies. This is not how it should be, but it will get better soon. We can only start going up from here.
