A single moment. That is all it takes for a normal day full of routines, friendly conversations and leisurely comforts to take a drastic turn. A car in the wrong lane. A clean cut college student behind a dumpster. An alligator at Disney. A plane never reaching its intended destination. A gunman in a nightclub. A single moment has the power to alter the lives of thousands and break the hearts of millions, or so it used to be.
If you have turned on a television, checked your social media sites, spoke to a friend or glanced at a newspaper even once in your entire life then you are no stranger to the fact that tragedies are continuously occurring all over the world. It seems that there are always people suffering and a great number of people grieving for those who suffer. On a daily basis children becomes orphans, parents lose children, friends mourn the loss of friends and spouses are widowed. We should be heartbroken. We should look for ways to help. We should let the broken know we care. We should do everything in our power to meet the needs of the needy and bring comfort to those who need it most, but in our social media society this is not what we see occurring in the face of tragedy.
Rather than being broken and sharing sorrow for those facing tragedy we find ourselves pointing fingers. We take what little information we get from opinion-driven videos on “Facebook” and write blogs about what the “heart of the problem” is. We call out people who think differently than we do. We become political experts, gun rights activists, psychologists, aggressive, defensive, angry and outright insensitive to the feelings of those who are directly affected by the tragedies in the world. This is a trend that has become all too excessive across social media platforms so let me share an example of the most horrific and complex situation we’ve recently faced, the mass shooting at Pulse in Orlando.
On this past Sunday morning I woke up to the sound of a CNN news update at 3 AM. The notification across my phone’s screen read “Breaking: Mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub. 20 dead, multiple injuries. Investigations continue”. At 3 AM I was heartbroken. It didn’t matter who the people were and it didn’t matter how they died. All that mattered to me was that at least 20 lives had been lost, but the updates didn’t stop there. For the rest of the day I received nearly 15 updates containing new bits of information on the shooting and I hoped the response of the majority of people would be an outpouring of sympathy and a sense of unity as a nation, but deep down I knew it couldn’t be that simple. Around two in the afternoon I finally checked “Facebook” to see what my friends had to say about the shooting. I was pleased to see a few people posting “Pray for Orlando” and encouraging people to line up and donate blood (always donate! It is so important!), but before long I came across the inevitable. Posts of compassion and love were quickly replaced with messages supporting gun control and turning to terms like “Muslims”, “radical Islamists” and “hate crime”. A platform that provides an opportunity to share love to the hurting was used to share opinions. People ceased to care about the hurting and began to push an agenda. We failed to love and in turn only marginalized the problem, replacing compassion with insensitivity.
Hopefully you can see the problem our social media society presents to those who are grieving tragedy. Social media outlets give us a place to instantly share our thoughts on literally any and everything. It is an environment that allows us to experience the instant gratification of saying what we think while providing no actual expression of sincerity or care. We can quickly share a thought on social media with no fear of actual confrontation. It is a land of name calling and misunderstanding where we aren’t forced to recognize how insensitive what we say may actually be. It allows us to openly disagree and think about what to say next without actually listening to what the other person is saying. In the case of agenda driven posts about the Pulse shooting the sharing of opinions and pushing of personal beliefs have not only further victimized those who are already suffering but it has also marginalized and stereotyped those of Muslim descent and the LGBT community as a whole.
While many continue to suffer from the tragedy in Orlando the public continues to argue about who and what is to blame leaving the families of the victims to grieve alone. This is the case for literally every tragedy that has occurred in the eye of the public as of late. We share pictures of Brock Turner to say what rapists do and don’t look like when we should address the sinful nature of rape while realizing that rapists don’t look one certain way and not another. We boycott a zoo because of a decision they made regarding the life and safety of a child without considering the effect falling in the gorilla enclosure will have on that kid’s life. Instead of blaming terrorists for terrorism we blame Muslims. We blame guns for shootings, but we don’t blame knives for stabbings. We blame parents for things they aren’t in control of. We don’t blame people who hate for hateful acts, we blame religions. We hate, we blame, we argue, but we don’t love.
Love is what we need to do. We need to look at our neighbors in love. We need to show our enemies love. We need to value the lives of the 49 who died at Pulse regardless of their sexuality because at the end of the day they weren’t just gay people. They were like us. They were humans and that is something to be valued.
Let us weep with those who weep. Love those who need love. Provide for those who need. And in the face of tragedy be compassionate in every way.
