We have all heard it before. Our parents and grandparents have all told us their "I remember where I was when..." stories. They remember where they were the day the Berlin Wall came down or when the Challenger exploded. They remember exactly what they were doing when they found out President Kennedy was assassinated. They all remember where they were when their worlds stopped turning.
For the Millenials, our worlds stopped turning for the first time on September 11, 2001. I can still remember exactly where I was sitting in my 4th grade class that day. I remember students leaving throughout the day for no reason and I remember knowing that it was odd thing for so many kids to leave during the day like that. When my sisters and I got home from school that day my mom explained what happened and let me watch the news with her. Even then, at 10 years old, I knew that the world was going to be different now.
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Since then, the world has stopped turning quite a few times. The Boston Marathon Bombings. Sandy Hook. The Paris shootings. Unfortunately, the list could go on and on and on.
The question though, is how many more times does the world need to stop? How many times is our world going to continue to be rocked? How many more times are we going to say, "I remember where I was when...?"
I for one and tired of finding myself in front of the TV watching yet another "breaking news" segment. I am tired of feeling the aching in my heart hearing that another person has lost their life to senseless violence. You'd think by now, we would be almost desentitized to all of the heartbreak and bloodshed, but maybe that's the point. We aren't supposed to be desentitized. It is supposed to hurt and upset us. It is supposed to haunt us. Because the truth of the matter is, we shouldn't be living in a world filled with so much violence.
The beauty of kids is they don't know how to not be genuine. Their minds don't understand the concept. Recently I was babysitting for a family that has a 2-year-old little girl. Before bedtime, we read a few stories that she picked out. The one was called "God Made Us Different." It talked about all of the ways we as people are different: our eyes, our body shape, etc. Then, it explained that although on the outside we are all different, on the inside we are all the same because we all like to eat and we all cry and laugh and love. When the story was over, the girl gave me a hug and said, "I love to love people." Her sweet heart nearly made me cry because in that moment I realized that her world hasn't stopped turning yet and I hope and pray that it never will.
