-Hank Green
Today twenty eight people died. I'm sure there are more people, of the billions in the world, who died today. But the twenty eight people I'm thinking of are the lives of a certain elementry school. There are no need for names, as the world I'm sure knows of this. What is worst, perhaps, is that twenty of those human beings were children. Children, who are happy and annoying all at the same time. I mean it, they can be such brats, with their demanding and spoiled attitudes. I mean it. In general, I am not a fan of children. But children, they are so wonderful too. Have you ever seen them when they're playing? They can see whole words, things we can never see. And it's like a miracle to watch them. And they wonder so far, they are so curious about the world. It is one thing to me to know that I do love that fact in children, the curiousity. Yes, know, ask questions. Please, I want you to know the world. I want to guide you in it. And maybe I am secretly a person who loves children, and maybe I will have them some day far for now. I really don't know. But I do know that the worlds they know are magic, it is something we are all born with and somehow all grow out of. When you were younger and you imagined things you saw them, you really, really saw them. Now, you can't, I know you can't. I can't. I use writing as my vice to try to capture the worlds of my youngers days. Children have a gift we do not possess. And others too. What else is a better gift in life than the potential that a human being possesses? Let me tell you what potential is, it's something lying in all of us that means we can do something, something big or small, it doesn't matter. But potential, it is how the world knew we existed. And children, they have more potential than us all, because they have yet to live their lives. They are living, and everyday the potential grows more and more. With that is beauty, the beauty that is hope. This little human being, what a miracolous thing they are, that you know they are going to grow up to leave something to the world. The only problem, though, is when they are robbed of their potential.
You know what I really think about when I think about the children who were lost today. I think about their hands. I think about how soft and small they were. Thier hands are no yet cracked or callussed. There are tight lines and cleanching fists. Scars can't be seen on their fingers. Instead, they are little things, soft and rounded, in all colors of the lightest pink to the darkest brown. And these hands, in my mind are always doing the same things. They are playing, grasping handfuls of sand to build a castle or clinging to the rope of a swing as their bodies bound in the air. In school the hands are scrawling on paper, witty little answers that they don't even see the human in. The hands can being things not so good either, shoving glue in the pink rosebud lips or sticking on forefinger into the nostril. And most of all I see them reaching toward the world that is all their own. Their hands are so unlike ours. They are hands they were once like ours but hands that we can never have again. You see, their hands are untouched by the world. Just soft things at play, things that do not yet know hardness. And this is what I see, this is what I keep trying to erase so badly from my head but I can't. I see these same hands, this gentle playing things, covered in blood.
I do not know the mind of the man who did this. I do not see how he is human, he must be broken. I know he has to be. I'm not angry at him either. I know the things he did were horrible. But when someone is so terribly broken, it not in my authority to judge the bad things they have done.They can't be judged on the same level as us because we are humans, whole pieces. They are not. People like the man today are no longer human. But I do know that these people exists, people like him who have broken to the point that they are not really heare anymore. And know, with them existing the worlds seems without hope but it is not. Like Hanke Green says, humantiy has to be good. I know that.
Sometimes when bad things happen it is easy for people to say the world is messed up. I can not see that as something that holds truth. There is bad. More bad in the world that there should be. But in spite of bad, there is good. There has to be good, because if there wasn't what else would t...
here be? I do not think there is a lesson to be learned in the recent events but I do think there is no cause for people to believe the whole of the world is wrapped in badness. Bad things happen, things that are out of our control. And I think it is our job as humans not to despise our world for its badness but to try our hardest to fix the broken bits that cause the bad.
Fin.
-Keshia
Currently Reading: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
This made me cry.
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