In light of the recent, tragic events that took place in Paris and Lebanon, I’ve come to realize how lucky I am. I am lucky to be okay, to have grown up with a sheltered life in a loving environment, to be assured in saying the town I call home will always be a safe place for me to return to.

We tend to take a lot of things for granted. Our homes, our families, our friends, our education. Whether it's subconscious or not, we really don't know how good our lives are until tragedy strikes. We are lucky, usually in more ways than one, and it is frighteningly normal to forget that.

It’s difficult to think about the terrorist attacks without thanking God, or whomever/whatever you happen to believe in, that you or someone dear to you was not in that situation. Does it really take something terrible to remember how lucky we are? And then when the tragedy fades into distant memory (think the school shooting at Sandy Hook, the bombings at the Boston Marathon) do we not go on living our own lives, leaving the people affected to suffer quietly?

As we post the “Pray for Paris” stories to our Snapchats, change our profile pictures on our Facebooks to the French flag's colors, and share quotes and pictures of tragedy to our feeds, I hope everyone thinks about how lucky they are, and what remembering these horrific events really means. I hope everyone actually takes a moment to reflect. Think about the most important things in your life, and what it would mean to lose any one of them. Lives will be forever altered by these current events, just remember that. But we have the ability to keep their memory alive. My heart goes out to the families of the victims; and I hope they know they're not alone.