When any form of violence occurs in this world I am reminded of this quote, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” It makes me think of all of the lost souls who will willingly damn themselves to hell by committing atrocious crimes in effort to cause pain, to murder for enjoyment, and/or to feel heard.

How often we don’t focus on a point in which the village should have saw the signs to make changes to our quality of life? How often do we fail one another? How we fail to protect, we fail to love, and we fail to stop the source of the problem. How often we wait till it’s too late to make change?

Even now in our grief we are forced to keep moving and be resilient to keep the machine going, to keep the system alive. We will once again create another tired, hateful, and angry member of our society with no checks, no balance, and no true justice. Only the failed belief that violence is an answer. It is not.

The only peace we have had has only been filled with noise and fake promises of thoughts and prayers with no real action. No extensive and permanent change. No one will acknowledge how desensitized we are to even have the capability to keep moving, to keep showing up in the midst of our grief — till another soul breaks and finds evil creeping into their cracks.

Life must go on and you must find joy in this life, but I hope you do so while also trying to make a difference in this world because none of this is okay. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to not be resilient and it’s okay to take some days.

Because none of this is normal and it will never be.