Munich Shooting

I’m sitting on the couch, reading, trying to concentrate on getting this thesis done and over with. Only faintly do I recognize the sounds of shouting and screaming. Earlier today I heard loud music and assumed there was some sort of event going on. Only a little later does he bring my attention to the noise, going out to the balcony to check on the sounds. He tells me people are running away from the mall below, no idea why, but that it looks surreal. Then we hear the gunshots. He immediately crouches down, tells me to get on the ground and runs inside. He shuts the shades and we turn off the lights, grabbing our phones. The police line is busy and we do not know who to turn to. We each write our parents a message of love, not knowing what is happening, if people will come upstairs, or what the threat is. It is too new to be on twitter or any news site, so we refresh anxiously trying to figure out what is wrong. We say a semblance of goodbye, being cautious and not knowing what awaits us. Then we wait. We sit in the darkness, scared of any noise and absolutely silent. It is completely dark, yet we can still hear shots and we discover a live feed of a man with a gun walking around on the parking deck above where we park our car. We don’t understand what is happening, why this is happening. That’s when I remember how I wanted to go downstairs and be in that mall then, how we were going to go all day to get some shampoo and this is what affects me most: the brush with danger and death. Seconds turn into minutes which stretch into hours as more people check in with us, call us, find out if we’re okay. Three hours later we leave our huddle spot underneath the table and sit on the couch, hearing helicopters as the hunt goes on.

We know the things people will say about this incident, true or not. That terrorist groups will take credit, that new medias and politicians will use this for their own agenda, that people will blame immigrants.

Yet this incident, while making me very happy to be alive, only makes me feel more empathy for those who have to live with situations like this everyday. Where gunshots are not uncommon, where the danger is directly in front of them, where war ravages and touches everyone they know, where there are no safety checks because that is reality. It makes me thankful that this is not my reality, but it is our world, together. The hatred, the pain, the suffering, and the senseless violence is our world. The misogyny, the racism, the desire to shut out all that is different, to guard our borders, and to close our hearts.

While our instinct reaction is of fear and anger, these do no good. It is only by opening our hearts that we can fix a world like this. To hermit up, to become isolated, to protect only ourselves is a world of individualism, of separation, of fear. It is not a world I envision for myself. We need to fight hatred and violence, with solidarity, the building of communities, and love. By closing ourselves off, nothing about our world is improved, it means we have given in to fear, a temporary solution, and one which denies our responsibility to this world, to humanity, to this planet.

The solution is not to draw away, but to embrace, to work together to fix the problems, to fight against the hatred and senseless violence. I envision a world that can be better, by only looking out for myself that world will never come to be.