So, it has happened again.

People who have been perceived as the “enemy” of a certain religion and life philosophy have been mercilessly annihilated today in Paris. 12 of them in total. Journalists. Cartoonists. People good with their colouring pencils, for goodness’ sake!

What made them so threatening? So menacing? So offensive?

Was their crime of joking about “serious” things and making a ridiculous philosophy into the laughing stock of the elite of the Parisian society so grave that punishment could be DEATH only????

Have we evolved from nothing to nothing?

Have we not learned our lessons from the Holocaust?

From the crusades?

From the recent beheadings in Syria?

We all have opinions. Divergent opinions.

We are entitled to have opinions. We are entitled to have different opinions. God have us all heads to use in order to form opinions. Personal opinions.

BUT our opinions don’t represent who we are. They are the result of our life experiences. Our upbringing. Our culture.

But they are not US.

So when someone makes fun of our ideas, our ideologies, our religion, we need to learn to differentiate and accept that they are NOT making fun of US.

They are not threatening us or our identity.

They are merely voicing their different view on things. Whatever those things are.

Ideas, ideologies, religions, concepts, percepts are floats. Means of expression. Coping mechanisms.

But when they become identity, a second skin, a mask to hide behind that’s when the world gets into deep trouble.

We are all human beings. We are all weak. We are all perishable. We are all in need of love. We will all die. We are all alike both in our need of love and in our pain when we get hurt.

Let’s stay human. Let’s go back to the basics. Let’s all remember that illness and death make us all equal: not one of us has ever found a way of escaping our human state and condition.

So why have we allowed our world to devolve to this? Why do we feel justified to hit and hurt and kill the ones who think differently than us? Why do we feel so threatened by a stupid difference of opinion and why can’t we see that our similarities run much deeper that our “differences”?

Today, a friend told me her teenage girl is badly bullied in school. For being different.

Today, small men with big guns walked into an office and shut for good a bunch of comedians. Because they couldn’t agree with the lines in the comedy.

Today, we have all looked at someone and classed them as “different” from us, allowing ourselves to feel superior based on personal judgement and opinion alone.

We are not better. We are not worse. We are all the same.

Will we ever get that as humanity?

We are all Charlies. We are all bullies.

We are all mere human beings.