Terrorism is on all of our minds. From white supremacists to ISIS, there’s a new nightmare every day, and my own fear of an impending attack has gradually increased.
Being a frequent concertgoer, the 2015 massacre that took more than 100 lives inside an Eagles of Death Metal show and elsewhere in Paris shook me, and my heart ached for those who lost loved ones on what should have been a joyous evening. The May 22 suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester stirred those feelings again. The Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, last week’s slayings on a MAX train in Portland—these acts of senseless violence feel even closer to home, because they actually are.
In April I visited Paris. A week into my trip a gunman killed a police officer on the Champs-élysées, where I had been with family just three hours earlier. I anxiously texted a Parisian friend of mine, seeking reassurance.
“Being worried is normal, then you realize you can’t do anything about it,” he said. We met for a beer and talked on the patio—the kind you see on every street corner, where people had been sitting during concurrent shootings two years ago. I was nervous, but everyone around me was carrying on as usual.
Last week, ISIS released a video on social media that included scenes from the Las Vegas Strip. Immediately, I was reminded of my friends in France. While I was there, I couldn’t quite understand how everyone seemed to live so fearlessly. Now, I realize that’s the best we can strive for.
Like Paris and London, Las Vegas is a popular tourist destination. We haven’t been a target of terrorism, but the fear, for many of us, is real. As Grande wrote to the victims in Manchester, “Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more … The only thing we can do now is choose how we let this affect us.”
Let’s choose to resist hate and racism. Let’s go to that concert and see that show. Let’s bet on living and go all in. That seems like the Vegas thing to do.
