Are We Still Watching?

 Are We Still Watching?

When I was seven, I had a phase where I used to flinch at the sound of fireworks. 

I knew they weren’t gunshots, but I’d still duck instinctively, heart racing.
Now imagine a world where the sound is gunfire.
Where there are no fireworks, only funerals.
Where children don’t flinch anymore- because they've gotten used to it.

That world isn’t a dystopian future.
It’s now.
It’s Gaza.
It’s Ukraine.
It’s every name, every place, that was trending- for a day- before we moved on.

We scroll past crumbled schools and lifeless bodies like they’re just another headline in a feed full of banana bread recipes and skincare routines.
A child’s final scream plays for ten seconds before a podcast clip interrupts it.
A grieving mother pleads for help in broken English, and the comment section debates her accent.
An apartment is blown to dust in real time, and someone writes: “Praying 🙏🏽💔.” 

We’re watching war like it’s content.
Watching children die like it’s normal.

In Gaza, entire families are being erased in one airstrike.
The photos come with warnings now: “Graphic content. Viewer discretion advised.”
But what about the people living it?
Where’s their discretion?

In American schools, kids rehearse lockdown drills like they’re just another subject.
Algebra. Biology. Surviving a shooter.

Teachers barricade doors with desks.
Kindergartners are taught to hide in closets.
And when a school gets shot up again, we send thoughts. Maybe prayers.
Then nothing. Until the next one.

We don’t cry like we used to.
We repost.
We “stand in solidarity.”
We use hashtags like they're bandages.

But hashtags don’t stop bombs.
They don’t bring back the children.
They don’t build homes, or disarm hate, or rewrite history.
They just soften the blow of our own helplessness.

Maybe we’re not numb because we don’t care.
Maybe we’re numb because we care too much and don’t know where to put it.
Because caring costs energy. Attention. Grief. And we’ve got bills to pay. Deadlines to meet. Lives to curate online. 

But if we stop feeling, we stop fighting.
And if we stop fighting, we start forgetting.
And if we forget, they win.

The warmongers. The racists. The ones who treat human lives like pawns on a board.
The ones who profit from pain, package it, and sell it back to us as “necessary”.

Violence should never be normal.
Blood should never be background noise.
A dead child should never be just another pixel on your screen.

So maybe it’s time to look again.
To not just see what’s happening- but to feel it.
To feel it long enough to say: This is not okay.
And then, to do something. Anything. Even if it’s small.

Because the world doesn’t just fall apart in explosions.
It falls apart in silence.