Brussels…

There’s a shiver going down my spine today and it’s not because of the coldness in the office… It’s about Brussels.

Seeing pictures of blast sites is becoming a common thing… It’s something that we see on our Twitter timelines, on the news and in print… It doesn’t sit well with me that these are images that my son is going to grow up seeing in his lifetime.

Whilst the pictures are coming out it’s easy to become unattached to what’s going on in the world.  It’s easy to gloss these things over as other acts of madness and move on… but let’s take a second to think about it even if it’s difficult to do so.  These are people who got up and were going to work. They had families, people who cared about them, they didn’t choose to die – they didn’t choose to be put in the papers, they just wanted to get to work or wherever they were going.  They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and then something happened to take them away from this life.

So what do we do now? As individuals, as families, as communities, as a country and as a global population?  As I’m watching my Twitter feed for answers on what I should be doing or how I should be feeling I’m struck by one thing… why can’t we just love each other?

I don’t care about the Prime Minister chairing a COBRA meeting (which has appeared a number of times on my Twitter timeline), I don’t have time for those making light of what’s happening and being corrected by political analysts.  I’m not even that bothered about the media outlets telling us that they (and the impression that only they) are reporting from the scene… I’m concerned about how we demonstrate to our friends, family and communities that we love each other.

And it’s not easy… Having compassion and care for someone else is not an easy thing – especially if you don’t understand them.  However, there is always one thing we can find common ground on – and at the moment, is our general outcry that these attacks are wrong and shouldn’t be happening.  They are creating too many victims and we, as a global population, have had enough.

So my response to this is – and always will be – to care and try and understand those around me, even if it’s difficult.  I want to demonstrate compassion and care for those within my sphere and show what a cohesive integrated society looks like to my son, so he will grow up feeling that the images that we see on the media are not acceptable.  I want to invite you to do the same.