Peace & Love

I think you'll probably see a fair amount of posts dedicated to the tragic events that have been occurring since Friday. I feel that as a person who wants to try and shed some positivity on my readers it's incredibly hard for me to write this post in a way that not's angry or sad but enlightening and happy.
But nevertheless I think it's something that needs to be done. Whether this only reaches a few people or many I hope that it can, in some way, help people try to understand this horrific event in a way that makes them see hope and not despair.

This picture went viral within hours of the news emerging on Friday night and it instantly hit me. Watching the news, at first, I was angry and upset and completely infuriated that something so devastating and hateful could happen in a city full of love and in a world where people are supposed to be humane, civil, respectful and compassionate. I was thinking to myself maybe it's the way we're bought up in this Western society that is supposedly so 'poisoning'? Maybe we're doing it wrong because, what good does all of that love and compassion do when something like this can happen to innocent people?

Then I began to see the reaction from people all over the world. Yes, you will see those very negative and hateful posts thrown around social media but what I looked to instead were the words of kindness, love and genuine sorrow for the lives lost. The way people were not focusing on how much hatred they felt for those attackers but how they were focusing on the love they felt for those victims and for a country AND a world that was experiencing pain. People will live their lives in fear but they will not live their loves without love and if these attackers are trying to change that then they will not succeed and the reaction from Friday's events just highlights that.

If we all just took a minute, stepped back, and realised that we shouldn't give them what they want. We shouldn't be infuriated by what they have done because they will laugh and they will strike again. We shouldn't turn on each other and blame one another for what happened. We shouldn't outcast groups of society that live humbly and peacefully besides us because those horrid attackers make us believe those 'types' of people are to blame. We shouldn't do this because that is what they want. What they don't want is love and kindness and compassion and strength and solidarity. All the things that we still have and we should continue to have no matter what happens next.

I urge everybody who has made a rash judgment or a negative statement or a hateful comment in the past few days to reconsider and to think about what you're saying and doing before you speak/act/post.

Here are some of the beautiful things I have seen since Friday which have restored my faith in humanity.