It’s been over a week since the attack on Manchester Arena happened. Since then, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things to do with terrorism, hate, the loss of life for no reason at all.
It’s a scary world we live in right now. From children not being safe to play on the streets, right to nobody being safe anywhere public. How are we supposed to carry on with our lives not knowing if the person next to us is about to detonate himself?
One major concern for me is that these people are not afraid to die, so how do you fight them? They die in an attack – the win. They die fighting for what they believe in – they win. I struggle to see how anyone can have any power or any threats against people who are not scared to die.
There are police everywhere. I keep hearing people mumble that Leeds is expected to be next. But I refuse to be scared.
I refuse because there are absolutely not patterns to where and when these attacks happen. The scale of the deaths varies. The way the attacks are carried out are not always the same. They act alone. The act in groups. It’s planned. It’s not planned. There are just too many different variables to predict where might be next.
The only thing I’m sure if is that it will happen again.
The only thing I can do is hope with my whole heart that the people I love are safe.
I am incredibly lucky that so far, nobody I directly know has been hurt during a terrorist attack. I am incredibly heart broken that not everyone can say this. I have friends that know people that died in Manchester and my heart goes out to them.
I am filled with both sadness and compassion when I see how people have come together at this sad time, to stand together and show care to complete strangers. It is the good that comes out of tragedies like this that gives me hope. After usually seeing murder, robbery, rape, violence on the news, on social media, CCTV videos of people getting vans broken into on Facebook CONSTANTLY – that those people are just a small percent of a huge amount of kind people that are forgotten about.
I hope that one day the world is a bit kinder.
Until then, let’s all be kind.
You are right, there are so many variables that it’s very difficult for the authorities to catch every single one of them before they do anything. It happened many times before, from what was told to the public and I imagined it happened many times without disclosing anything. It’s scary when it’s so close. I saw the CCTV footage with the terrorist buying stuff a few hours before the attack and I couldn’t watch it until the end. He looked like a normal person getting some snacks. I imagined he spent his day praying and preparing and doing other terrorist-stuff, not shopping relaxed passing by other people doing their shopping.
The only thing we can do is to live our life as happy as we can. I try not to think too much on what can happen when I’m at an event or in a place that can be targeted. I will go tomorrow in the city centre to see a temporary labyrinth, I will go to an event later in the week and I can only hope nothing will happen to any of these.
I try not to think about this topic too much, as it scares me so much. You’re so right though – how can we fight someone who isn’t afraid to die? We just can’t. All we can do, as you say, is be kind. And try NOT to let it scare us, even though it’s difficult. Because that’s what they want. And we can’t let them win.
I don’t think we CAN fight INDIVIDUALS who are prepared to die but we can fight the movements behind them. We must always be who we are, and what the women and men in our past have fought for, and never give a whisker to backwards demands on our society.
To lose a person we love is always a tragedy, but to have them taken away from us in this way is, I think, the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Ever since I saw the news of that attack I had a feeling that something heavy was sitting on my chest.
It is a completely different feeling having your loved one killed in a car accident and to know that someone killed them. The pain of the loss is the same, but still it is different to know that your child, brother, sister, parent was killed because someone hates you, your culture, your country and everything you represent so much they are prepared to kill themselves in order to kill you.
That kind of hate is poisonous….and it breaks my heart to think of those families. Death is always tragic, but the murder of our loved ones is a whole new level of pain, a wound that never heals completely. I wonder how many more children will be murdered in terrorist attacks this year and how many families will lose their loved ones. I wonder why we aren’t able to do more to protect them. Paradoxically, the media often has more sympathy for the killer, than for the victim. More is said about the terrorist, than about those innocent life being lost. It is like the victims lives don’t matter…I cannot understand it.
How to fight those not scared to die? Who says they aren’t scared to die? If the terrorist weren’t scared to die, they wouldn’t take drugs before these kind of attacks, something they often do. They are afraid, but their hate (of us) is stronger than their fear of death. Their bloodthirstiness overrides their survival instincts. Besides, unlike common warfare, where a soldier has to exhibit continuous courage and discipline, a terrorist just has to press a switch. It requires a lot less courage. But even if we take for granted that they aren’t scared to die, there are still ways to fight them. There is always a way. In its history, Europe has faced much more numerous and equally vicious foreign invaders but the problem now seems to more complex.
The question is whether it is (i.e. fighting them) something that European politicians really want. Perhaps the situation of fear and uncertainty suits them because it enables them to rule over us more easily. Perhaps the European politicians are on a pay roll of rich Arabian countries. I read a story about some girl from Europe who went to fight against ISIS and when she returned she was sentenced to jail. At the same time, Europeans (often not from Europe but with EU passports and citizenship) who were fighting for ISIS had no problems returning to their countries….and a lot of them were behind these attacks. How is this possible? I’m sorry if I’m sounding like a know-it-all, I don’t think I know it all, but obviously something is rotten in Europe and frankly it is a problem that concerns us all.
I think a part of the problem is that Europe is not willing to acknowledge the treat. I saw it coming, I must say that I did, I knew that terrorist attacks in Europe are going to increase this year, but that doesn’t make me feel any better, it makes me feel worse, and even more empty, frustrated and powerless inside. As an individual person, one just doesn’t know what to do. Even to speak out is not considered politically correct, because the attacker is of different faith- like anyone cares about their faith. As soon as anyone writers about how hurt they are or how they feel, there is some idiot telling them they should feel for the attacker. No, we shouldn’t be made to ‘feel’ for the attacker or try to justify his actions. There is no justification for murder of children and innocents.
It’s a scary world we live in. I think the only thing we can do is to continue to live as normally as possible. But, sometimes that is easier said than done.
Hello Corinne, the news of the attack in Manchester has convulsed the whole world, and it is natural that there is a kind of psychosis, right here in Lima we do not feel safe in this wave of violence that plagues the whole world, we pray to God because this ends. Kisses.
I don’t remember the world ever being as scary as it is right now, in my lifetime. I was heading to an event not so long ago and the Mr actually turned to me and said, if you see a truck drive into the crowd this is what you do….I stopped in the street, the fact it had come to this, to having to have this serious conversation because it was something that could actually happen. That’s scary. It’s a scary world we walk but you know what, I’m not going to stop, I’m not going to not go somewhere or do something through fear, they might not be scared to die, but hell, NOT having an adverse effect on people has got to hurt them!
Sarah 🙂
When someone is willing to kill themselves there is no action you can do to prevent it. Sadly it is trying to minimise their actions. The world is a very sad place at the moment. How anyone can have the belief that they have the right to kill another I will never understand. Lucy x