The events that have taken place recently across the country, as well as the world, have resulted in my heart cracking each and every time I turn on the news to see people dead or injured because someone decided today would be a good day to take away people's lives. I go on social media to see ignorant people expressing their very immature and irrational opinions, yet social media is the perfect place for that. Everyone thinks they have a solution, everyone thinks they know how to avoid this ever happening again. Fingers are pointed. Stereotypes are created. Political views are expressed.

I've been wanting to speak on this for quite some time, but I've also wanted to keep my opinions to myself due to the fact I'm a journalism major and should remain objective. When Brock Turner raped the barely conscious girl and received a minimal punishment, when a nightclub in Florida soon became the location for the biggest mass murder in the United States, when a man brought a gun onto UCLA's campus in order to kill his professor, I had to remain objective. Now I must speak.

This world we live in will not grow if we continue hurting each other. We will not prosper in a society that is fueled by hate and the notion that killing people will make the world better again.

I don't know why people think they have the right to take another's life. Who can say their life isn't worth living? Who can say their time on this earth should be over? No one. No one has the right to take another person's life, yet it is happening in such frequency that it makes me afraid to live this life I have been given.

The irony of wanting to live your life but being too afraid to live it hurts me. You never know if today is the day someone will decide to use their weapons to attack rather than defend. You could be dancing with your friends at a club, laughing and smiling and feeling so alive, only to be hiding in the bathroom, holding your breath and sending your mom goodbye texts because you honestly don't know if you'll ever see her again.

This deeply frightens me to the point where my heart aches with the uncertainty of the unknown.

Please listen to me when I say this:

We are all human beings. We all have a heart in a chest, a brain in our head, and organs functioning to keep us alive and well. All of our bodies are comprised of the same exact components -- lungs, liver, intestines. These components don't label us. They don't say, "You're this or that so I'm going to stop working because I don't like that." They don't. They do their job to keep us alive. But, for some reason, some people in this world think if someone else is different from them, then that person doesn't deserve the same opportunities, treatment or rights as them. Some people believe that if you love someone of the same sex or you're a different skin color, that you don't deserve equality. Some people believe anyone different from them shouldn't take another breath. What scares me is that it seems as though this group of people is growing, these people who don't like anyone different from them.

If we were all the same, this world would not be nearly as beautiful. This world would lack in variety, it would lack in divergence, it would lack in uniqueness. Our society wouldn't be able to blossom without differentiation among us. It would be dull and dismal. There would not be any zest.

You get to be whoever you are. That's your right. And you should own it. Love yourself, love the skin you're in, love the person you love. But you also have to let others do the same for themselves. If they're not hurting you, it doesn't concern you. We should all relish in the delight of the diversity among us.

We are all alive. We all have beating hearts. We all crave happiness and a full life. We are all the same inside. Our hearts beat and our hearts love, and nobody should ever take away somebody's ability for their heart to beat and to love simply because that person is too afraid and too full of hate to live in a world that is sprinkled with diversity. I'm not saying you have to love everyone. You don't even have to like everyone. But you should respect everyone.

Let our hearts beat and let us fill our lives with adventures, memories and love until our lives come to an end due to natural causes and not from the hate, anger and rage inside someone who doesn't see the beauty in us all being different.