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Orlando\u2026what is there left to say about Orlando? In the coming days, we will hear everything all over again, the same arguments, the same outrage, the same speeches, but only we \u2013 as a world \u2013 can make this kind of thing stop. The secret is not more guns and more blood, the secret is more understanding, more acceptance, and less of turning a blind eye because it \u201cdoesn\u2019t affect you\u201d. Newsflash: it affects everyone.<\/p>\n
When I first saw the news, I admit I didn\u2019t think a great deal about it, my own life went on around me, I moved through my own petty daily battles, and then\u2026hours later\u2026that knowledge slammed into me. Have we become so used to this kind of thing happening that it no longer even makes an immediate impact? The thought terrifies me\u2026but it also terrifies me that it may be true.<\/p>\n
So there is something that I remind myself of: everyone belongs to someone. It may not be your relative that perishes at the hands of someone else\u2019s believes, it may not be your child who suffers from the insistence that guns will solve all problems. But it is someone\u2019s child<\/em>. We live in a free world, we are blessed with that privilege, blessed in some cases only by the lottery of where we happened to be born. And yet, we forget about that privilege every day.<\/p>\n When I was in University, I took part in a LGBTQ awareness demonstration. During the proceedings there was a list read out of all the names that could be found of transgender and LGBTQ individuals who had been killed or terribly injured in the past year simply for being who they were. Not for any crime, not for any reason, just for existing. Just because someone believed that they shouldn\u2019t exist. Every time a name was read, someone in the crowd collapsed to the ground \u2013 at first it was those of us who had been told to do so, who had been given an assigned name as part of the demonstration, but by the end, there was not a single person standing in that crowd. We all lay there, still, while the organizers walked between us and traced chalk-outlines around our still forms. The sound of the chalk in our ears was deafening. Those chalk outlines stayed on the pavement for a long time after the demonstration was over\u2026<\/p>\n My mother came to that demonstration with me, perhaps one of the bravest things I have ever seen her do. She didn\u2019t participate, but stood with the onlookers watching, listening\u2026and when the first of us dropped, I knew without looking that she would have started crying. Because that\u2019s when it became real to her \u2013 everyone belongs to someone, and it wasn\u2019t just because it was me on the ground, at that moment, everyone was hers.<\/p>\n And that, perhaps is the attitude the world needs. Everyone is ours. We need to take care of each other not attack each other. Pick each other up instead of pulling each other down. We need to ask ourselves when does this stop? When do we make<\/em> it stop? And we are never going to accomplish that with more violence, and more guns and more anger. We will save no lives trying to prove a point. How long before moments like I had today \u2013 when I breezed past a tragedy without truly even noticing it until hours later \u2013 become commonplace simply because we have become so numb to them?<\/p>\n My heart goes out to all those affected by this tragedy, my heart goes out to the world\u2026a world that still cannot explain why this keeps happening\u2026<\/p>\n Why are there still so many chalk outlines on the pavement?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Orlando\u2026what is there left to say about Orlando? In the coming days, we will hear everything all over again, the same arguments, the same outrage, the same speeches, but only we \u2013 as a world \u2013 can make this kind … Continue reading