A while back on tumblr, right after the tragic shootings in Orlando, I received a question about ISIS, and while the specific attacks I refer to in the beginning of the piece are not as time-relevent as they once were, I feel that the overall message still stands, and I wanted to post my response, semi-edited, on this blog also. You can find the original interaction here, if, for some reason, you want to read my very unpolished and far more emotionally charged reaction to this question.
Unnamed tumblr user: “What’s your opinions on ISIS and everything thats going on?”
The world that we live in today is messed up beyond belief, and I’m too tired to be afraid anymore. Orlando, Shanghai, Daraya, Tel Aviv, the horrors never end. I no longer check the news to see IF something horrible has happened, I check to see WHERE it happened, because there’s no longer any doubt in my mind that something terrible has happened.
We live in a world where people can’t walk down the street without fearing for their lives, without fearing that they might be killed for their faith, their race, or for who they love.
I see all the good people who are trying to set the world right, and I worry that it will never be enough, because it only takes one person to kill a thousand. I worry for my friends, my family, for strangers I’ve never met, because I know the world is cruel, and I’ve never known it any other way. My first memories are of walking around a mostly-deserted Boston airport after the attacks on 9/11, watching as bomb dogs sniffed luggage brought by the terrified few and far-between travelers. I grew up seeing millions die for nothing in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, watching people kill each other on false convictions and over petty differences. I was a freshman in high school when the Boston Marathon Bombings happened, a sophomore for the protests in Kiev, a junior when Boko Haram attacked Nigeria, and a senior when a lone shooter massacred dozens of people in an Orlando nightclub, and terrorists killed over a hundred in Paris. None of these things surprised too much; these days i’m more surprised by something good happening, for in this world that we live in now, all we are ever shown is horrors. And none of these things scared me, because this is the world I’ve always known, and after a while you lose the ability to be afraid of what’s always there. These days, I’m more shocked when something good happens in the world. And for these reasons, I worry.
I worry for the future of my country, and for the future of the world, because I’ve seen what humanity is capable of when it’s at its worst. I study the past and see that humanity has never changed, we’ve only put new words on the same things, and I worry.
But I’m not afraid, because I’ve grown up in this world, and because if I give them my fear I’ve only done what they want, and because, despite all of this, I still have hope. Hope that one day the world might change, that everyone will be able to live in peace and get along, that people will learn tolerance, even if it comes reluctantly. I have hope that my brother’s children will grow up in a world better that we did, because despite everything, despite all the bad things that have happened, humanity IS trying, people are still doing good and charities are still working hard, and slowly, bit by bit, the world is becoming a better place than the one our parents and grandparents grew up in, better than the one we grew up in.
And so, despite everything, I have hope for our worlds future.
Guten Nacht,
-AnJ