Today, I’d usually post the next fragment, a short story about anything, a spur of the moment thing, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but always meant to be beautiful. That doesn’t seem to fit today, though, because of what happened in Paris last night. For the second time this year, the city I love most in the world was attacked, and this time, countless more innocents were killed and injured… I followed the broadcast until deep into the night, but honestly, even when I was too tired to think straight, I couldn’t sleep much. So instead, I wrote a short piece to lay down my thoughts on what I just witnessed from afar.

It’s not well-written, it’s raw, since I didn’t want to change anything it said, but I want to share it with you today, instead of the fragment.

We are at war.

We are at war. That is my first thought after finally closing the live broadcast of the events that happened in Paris tonight. It is 2:30 in the morning. I am in Stockholm, far away from all of it, but the news hit me as if it had happened next door.

We are at war. It is a pretty simple realisation. Coming to think of it, I think we all always knew that we were at war. We just needed a tragedy near our own homes to be reminded of it.

What happened today was inhuman, a shocking act against humanity, and against its values. That is what the president of the United States said in his declaration, three hours ago. And I am still sitting behind my laptop, trying to comprehend what this means. Because it has to mean something, right? Surely there is a message behind this massacre, surely there is a reason…

I try to think of one – any! – that would explain all of this, when I read, somewhere on social media, the words of a journalist that spent a year in captivity in the Middle-East. His words are fairly simple: what happened tonight has already happened! Worse: it is happening every day!

We are at war. That is what it means. We have been at war for as long as history can recall, but that is easy to forget, when it all happens ten thousand kilometres away.

We are at war, and that means we need to fight. We need to understand that no matter how far away “far away” seems, it is always close enough to reach us, to hit us, and tonight, one tragedy was overlooked: the fact that we didn’t see it coming.

We are at war, and it does not matter which “side” you are on, for there will inevitably be “sides”, and on all of them, there will be innocents who will suffer. I would ask for this to stop, but I am no fool: I know it will not, because that is not how we, humans, are.

We are at war, but not with a state, not with a religion, not with any group. We are at war with ourselves, and that is why it will not end.

As I am writing this, I want you to know: this is not meant to be pessimistic, or dark. This is not a message to tell you to give up. I am writing this with one sole purpose: to remind you that there is hope. To all those who have survived tonight: you have survived tragedies like this every single day since the day you were born. We are at war, and always have been. But you will survive.

All you need to do, all I am asking you to do, is to remember this, to be aware of this war that we are all involved in, and to use it to move forward, rather than to bring you down. Don’t be scared, and fight, through your refusal to reduce yourself to this violence they try to instil.

Never forget: we are at war!

L.S.

Night of Friday 13 November 2015