Our generation has grown up in a world where terror, death and violence is normal. There have been 385 terror plots in the United States since Sep. 11. There is no question that millennials have grown accustomed to death and despair, but regardless of the increase in crisis in the past year, more and more millennials are becoming desensitized to the idea of death.

Even on our own campus, it seems we are taking out our black dresses and suits far too often. Campus mourned the loss of Colby McDaniel in 2014, Katie Kirby in 2016 and Drew Kirk and Zach Trussell in 2017. Death has struck our own campus more than we can even begin to understand.

We might watch the news and say “that’s horrible” or “I can’t believe it,” but that’s all we say. Violence and death has become so prevalent in our society that people are beginning to accept that it happened and move on. We are no longer mourning each crisis like earlier generations.

With every death and every attack on our nation, we become more apathetic to mourning.  How long do we grieve before the next mass shooting happens? This is a question that has gone through the minds of every millennial in America. Ever since we can remember, we’ve known death and despair.

We do not believe that people are losing empathy for those affected by crisis, but we do believe that very few millennials are mourning the loss of somebody that they have never known. The problem that we are running into is that we strive less to understand death and more to become comfortable with it.

We could not function if we mourned every single death in America. Millennials are becoming numb to the idea of loss. We must strive not for numbness but for understanding. Death is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life before God.