For Paris.

As cowards, you can do a hell of a lot of damage. You can create chaos, you can terrorize the minds of innocent people, you can instill fear into entire communities. You can threaten lifestyles, cause people to second guess whether they want to celebrate in large groups or participate in events that make them happy. You can target values, religions, emotions. You can try to eradicate the very aspects of our society that you will never have the privilege of knowing. You can be violent. You can force people to feel pain, to watch helplessly as another person’s blood is shed on the very streets they call home. You can slaughter. You can ruthlessly rip a human life away from their family. You even have the power to remove them from this world. You can pull triggers, you can cause explosions.

But you can’t win.

You will never have the ability to kill what it is that you loathe so much.Your ears will never deafen to the distant sound of children’s laughter nor will your eyes go blind to the sight of a warm embrace between two old friends. That pain you are capable of inflicting? That pain is miniscule in comparison to the outpouring of love that we are capable of expressing.  You can’t kill that resilience. You can’t kill the courage inside of a firefighter, willing to run into a burning tower to save people he has never even met before. You’ll never have the strength of a person willing to, despite unknown danger, create a make-shift tourniquet to stop the bleeding from a stranger’s body. You can’t kill the human spirit. The power of such spirit pushing people to overcome incredible tragedy. You can’t kill our ability to thrive against all odds. You can’t kill the love nations worth of people have inside of their hearts. You can’t kill the deep sense of responsibility we have to protect one another.

As cowards, you can do a hell of a lot of damage.
As humanity, we will always rebuild, radiating enough light to erase any and all damage you’ve done.

My thoughts are with you Paris, love will always win.