I was 13 years old in September of 2011. I lived on an army base at the time but went to a high school off-base with everyone my age from the neighboring towns. For a month or so after the attacks, what used to be a ten-minute commute coming home from school was a multi-hour affair as every vehicle was searched and inspected, starting the general closure of military bases in the country that continues to this day. The following month reduced that wait to 60-90 minutes as a more refined system was put into place, and finally that ten-minute journey settled into a thirty minute one for the remainder of my time there. Fear seeped into the bedrock of a community that had previously been impermeable.
I had several family members who lived in NYC, and as a city that has over 1/40th of the population of the USA in it, that’s something that a large portion of the country could say. Several hundred people were in Pulse on Saturday night in Orlando. So far none of my direct acquaintances have shown up on the expanding list of casualties that I can sickeningly refresh throughout the day. All of those people were part of the community, and like the attack that affected our whole country, the networks that have been irrevocably altered this weekend affect the entirety of Orlando.
I think that it’s an easier call to action to say that I’d like less focus on the use of this tragedy as a way to feel good about ideals, and to actually do good. I really don’t care about frivolous arguments about vernacular and smug satisfaction. Too often I see directed calls, such as the call for blood donations yesterday, as a way to salve guilt over perceived transgressions of community.
Blood donations are always needed, without any specific catalyst to warrant them. Blood supplies in the country are always lower than needed, and there are always good reasons to donate. In this argument, I’ll ignore the large percentage of my community that cannot donate blood for a variety of reasons, most notably the terrible irony of being unable to donate by being an active homosexual, like many of the people killed.
Can you not donate blood for some reason? Do you not live in Orlando and cannot directly volunteer here? That’s ok. Your own community needs just as much assistance as mine does, maybe in different ways right now but for the same goal of providing meaning and support for your neighbors. The beautiful thing is that our globalized community makes all of the world your neighbors, and kindness is outrageously contagious.
The multiple communities that intersect in my life are loving and caring, with a focus placed on service to others and not just to self. Choose to do something for another today, not because you feel a social obligation but because you feel that every act of kindness compounds and outweighs heinous acts. One act of violence causes an instance of heartbreak. One act of kindness sets off a chain reaction of continued kindness.