paris

About Paris, the most beautiful city I've ever been in.  Yesterday night a series of terrorist attacks in the City Of Light killed at least 129 people.  The orchestrated attacks hit Stade de France, four restaurants/bars, and the concert hall Bataclan at the same time, about 9:30 Friday evening.  It is at Bataclan where most of the casualties occurred.  There four gunmen fired their automatic assault rifles into the packed crowd.  It could have been worse at Stade de France where a France-Germany match attended by the President of France was going on, but fortunately security stopped two terrorists with explosives before they were able to enter the stadium.  ISIS has now claimed responsibility for the attacks.

So here we are, about ten months after Charlie Hebdo and fourteen years after 9/11, mourning more lives lost in the hands of those who murder in the name of ideology and religion.  That's not even counting the innumberable lives being lost every day in the other parts of the world, including and particularly the Middle East, for this ongoing war.  I highly doubt that this is acceptable with any God. 

I don't know why we cannot just all occupy our own little space on this earth and live and let live.  Why does anybody or any side have to be right?  Why can't we be all right, or for that matter, all wrong?  Does any of us really know anything beyond this corporal existence?  Isn't everything else just a mystery?  A guess, a gamble, a chance. Is it really that impossible to accept that maybe none of us actually know the absolute truth?

And while we search and cope with this life and all the discontent and disillusions that haunt us, we just need to hold on to the things that we do know.  We know we can get up in the morning, be kind to the people you encounter, love whatever family and friends you have, cherish art and music and food and culture.  We know those things are real, so live for those things.  Make meaning of those things that are in front of us, because anything else is too much to comprehend.