About an hour ago I went to the gym to get a quick workout in before continuing on with my busy day of classes. I went to the cardio room to get those glutes working. Along the side wall in front of the treadmills was a row of televisions. My eyes shifted from one to the next, noticing first a soap opera, then some show I didn’t recognize, and finally the news, covered by CNN I believe. Involuntarily, my eyes dropped to the white banner along the bottom of the screen. Written in black letters was the message, “shooting at UCLA campus; 2 shot.”
I know I am not alone in feeling disgust, and deep sorrow every time I hear about these mass and school shootings. They are tragic. Two students have been confirmed dead from the shooting, but my last check has also confirmed that the campus is now safe. They are marking the event as a “murder-suicide.”
I am from Los Angeles. I have many friends who attend UCLA and live in the surrounding areas. I am not going to get into statistics, but the number of shootings our nation has annually is absurd and heartbreaking. We, as millennials, are at the age when we are starting to understand. We are beginning to grasp the fear that parents have for their children. We now know what it means when they say, “It can happen to anyone, anywhere.” And it can happen at any time.
While I was going for a run, friends were on lockdown, afraid. What if it happened to me? What if, at the same time, Oregon State had to go on lockdown? This reminds me of the tragedy in Paris a few months back. It happened there at a concert. What about any other concert? We live in a peculiar time. There are so many of us, and there is so much to go around, yet this “much” can also include hate, violence, and pain.
Maybe it is our affluence in the United States that has caused more people to resort to violence. Maybe we need to pay more attention to each other as humans. Maybe we need to use our ethics and morals to see one other as the 'ends' of our actions, rather than as a means to complete an outside action. Maybe we need to pay more attention to mental illness and really understand what that means, rather than blindly prescribing pills to children or ignoring problems until it’s too late.
Maybe we just need to look up from our phones while we walk to class and say hello to a stranger who has been feeling invisible and unnoticed for the past year. Maybe we need to complain less and do more. Maybe we should take more time to recognize what is going to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of others. Maybe we just need to step back for a moment and appreciate the blooming flowers, the sounds of the birds, and the smell of the breeze.
Maybe we can change this, and our children will look back at this time in history and study it and learn from it.
Maybe love will win.
