The massacre in Orlando has been on my mind, as I'm sure it's been on many of yours. My Facebook feed is full of support, prayers, well wishes, and meme's in honor of the tragedy as well as having been mentioned in passing at my place of work. I've also seen the typical gun law arguments and anti-Islam rhetoric and what politician said what do whom. The outrage and fear caused by this, and many other mass killings, tends to follow this same pattern these days and I can't help but wonder;
Are we just growing more divided?
Or are we truly growing closer as a nation? Mind you, I don't mean just as a country. I don't mean just as the LGBTIQAP community, either. I mean as a species, as the Human Nation. Perhaps I'm young enough and naive enough to think that perhaps the deep, underlying issue here is the division of people, of humanity. Not guns, not Islam, not Donald Trump.
When I first read about what had happened in Orlando, the first thing that popped in my head was a part in John Lennon's song, "Imagine": Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace...
I do imagine that. I like to imagine everyone is simply an extension of myself, and myself an extension of everyone. If only Omar Mateen could have imagined just the same. If only his parents could have, and their parents before them. Same goes for our parents...Ourselves, too. But that's in the realm of "what if's", isn't it? Whether or not we begin to unite as a global brotherhood, I wish all the best for those affected by this horrendous ordeal. My heart goes out to everyone who's felt the sting of this travesty, and I hope we can all continue to try to imagine, Living life in peace.