Just the other day, I turned to Brad and said, “Why are some people so bad?”

He obviously didn’t have an answer. I think I was talking about someone’s bike getting stolen or someone robbing a store in town.

I was exhausted with all of the hurt in my world. I was weary with finding forgiveness and searching for the good behind the ugly in people. Why couldn’t people just think of how their actions effect others? Why couldn’t they take a moment to consider the trials they’d never faced in their lives that someone else is struggling through? Or imagine that the way they live their life is unique to them and their happiness, but that it doesn’t necessarily suit every other person out there? Lend a hand to make things a little less turbulent rather than throwing another bump in the path. Life is hard enough on its own without people hurting each other.

Writing it out, it feels like a question a child would ask. I know hurt. I know people who are hurting. Terrible things happen to people, and they don’t always choose to react in positive ways. I suppose that a negative reaction might come with some kind of rush that blocks out all the terrible that is happening in their lives – if only for a moment. It happens on all scales. From tiny to massive. The stolen bike or the store held at gunpoint fell somewhere in between.

I’m not naive. Human beings don’t always make great choices.

But I am a person who loves people. I stand for love. I stand for acceptance. I stand for everyone being able to have their own opinion and make their own choices. I stand for people reaching for their goals and dreams. I stand for everyone’s story being different, and there being a place for everyone to live out their stories in peace.

No matter how hard I try to understand what horrible things must have happened to the people who committed these heinous crimes in Paris yesterday, no matter how dark the spaces my heart searches to in order to feel some compassion, I cannot come up with one logical reason for a human being to point their weapon at a crowd full of innocent human beings enjoying something I love – music – and murder them. I cannot come up with one reason why their lives showed them this particular path and they chose to follow it and act in that way. I cannot imagine anything so black and terrible that it could justify this. Nothing justifies this. Nothing.

My heart is broken. For Paris, for the world. And while I leave the larger fight up to the people in charge, I will push through the darkness by continuing to open my heart to people in need. I will live and love without fear. I will go to concerts and dance to the music to remember those who lost their lives. I will keep doing good to try and balance out those people who choose the bad.

Peace for Paris. Peace for the World.

xoxo