Everything began to crash and burn. The pieces were falling apart, and as hard as we tried there was no way they were ever going to recover the whole. One step forward would be made, then one hundred lives backwards we fell to misery again.

I eagerly write this paper before I have to include more. I eagerly write this paper before we come face to face with the next disaster. But why? Why am I so eager to cover the newest disaster when I know I can cover one next week, or the following week. I have told myself, yes, I will produce an article that consists of tragedies our world is facing. But when? Whenever. Although there is so much happening now, it will be happening later, it will be happening weeks from now, months from now. I can not turn my head away from my lit up phone screen. The notifications after notifications, one hundred more killed, ISIS connections found, another life, another cop, another black life, another terrorist, another chance for our world to fall deep. We are falling too deep, too deep for anyone to help. We have fallen to a place of hate.

We are teaching our children and loved ones that it is easier to hate than to see the pain in love, in truth, in well being. We are becoming comfortable in a state where we are surrounded by distress. We are moving on too quickly from the tragedies because they no longer hurt the way they once did. We are able to live on, talk about the most recent killing, then continue. Less conversations are being brought up. We are losing our passion for love too fast for our minds to capture it. There comes a point where all you know is pain, all you know is misery, all you know is hate, and all you know is defeat. At this point, we ask ourselves how are we supposed to grow on something so foul? Is it possible to create something beautiful when all you are witnessing is violence? Will my eager voice of change get heard through the trembling crowds of savagery.

It’s so painful. It becomes intolerable to know that these words will not grow, they will land upon a few eyes and then be forgotten to the next death. It is utterly sickening to know that tomorrow the flag will still sit at half-mast. Our heads will hang a little lower and that although our minds trick us into adjusting, we are not ready for the next incident, the next crime, or the next death.

It is time for us to take on the challenge of understanding the pain, to pick to love rather than hate. We must no longer allow ourselves to think that this is just another notification on the news, it is more than that. It is our turn to care. We must care about each other, and everyone. We must show ourselves what it means to find pain in love. We must allow ourselves to feel the pain of those being attacked, and we must act. Begin to read, write, listen, speak. Begin to develop a self that is more. To act is to change, to change is to grow, to grow is to find more and to find more is to find love.