And here we are again.
Funny to wake up with American news informing you they're interrupting their elections briefly because your country has just lost 84 people thanks to a nutcase with a truck. Funnier even to note at the time of the facts, you were watching fireworks, with friends and family and not a care in the world, never mind the fact that parents and kids were dying for the exact same thing, several hundred miles south. Funny how the first comparison I can make are the attacks that occurred during other festivities, in Karrada, Iraq, at the end of the Ramadan fast. 292 dead.
They keep striking the merry. They keep striking joy, togetherness, celebration. They keep targeting everything that unites us, in hope that we will divide. And even if some are, even if there is a recoil, the mere fact that we continue to do these celebrations proves that in the end all they will not truly have broken us.
Are you a hero, for murdering the child of your enemy? Are you anything worth acknowledging, even to those that might previously have shared some of your views? What peace do you hope to bring, what purity do you hope to establish, pray tell?
ISIS recoils, and latches out like a wounded snake. Losing territory in Iraq and Syria has weakened both its resources and its coat of armor. These are no longer invincible prophets; these are humans, and humans can be destroyed. You can't kill an idea, but take out enough of its defenders and it will die out all on its own. What do you think terrorists have been trying to do this whole time?
They can't kill all of us. They can kill almost any of us, but the majority of the planet is a rather large chunk to take on in its entirety. Because clearly that's what they intend to face. They don't like Occidentals, obviously, but they don't seem to like Muslims, either. They don't like kids, they don't like women, they haven't even started on the Asian continent, and while we all do have our differences, we have mostly succeeded in burying the hatchet for a moment, just long enough to deal with the isolated pain-in-the-ass.
So technically, they aren't going to win. They're going to hurt us, though, at this point that part at least is a given. But how much they hurt us remains up to us. We can continue to shrink back to what we know, what we think is safe. We can attack everything we believe is different, just to be safe. We can waste time and energy fighting one another, and be left with hardly enough strength to face the real enemy. And perhaps then, they will indeed have broken us.
Or like many have said, we can hold strong, together. Remember the fallen, protect the wounded and stand alongside anyone willing to raise his voice against the war on terror. Look not at who your ally is, but rather what he fights for. There are few people in this world willing to build a home over a field of ashes.
So, peace has gone, innocence is lost. Do we stop living, though? Never. We'll exercise a caution that wasn't needed before, but we'll keep celebrating who we are, and where we've come from. Celebrating what defines us, with the people that we love. And if we keep this up, without giving in to hatred, without giving in to fear, then at least we'll have a message to give to the future generations.
And for the kids that didn't get the fireworks they'd come for, light the skies. We'll remember them, as we will those that fell in November, and as we will the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, and as we should every single victim of this worldwide massacre. Our nation's anthem rings more soundly than ever today. We marched once against tyranny, and perhaps it's time we march again. But for the children, just for hope, light the skies.
Darkness always lurks, but it doesn't take much to make it disappear.
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