One week later, and it’s time to move on.

College students return to class in Blacksburg, Virginia. And the country goes through the next step in the grieving process. The sadness lies in the fact that someday this will be old news.

I feel a year older than I did on the morning of April 16th, 2007. I feel like incidents like this, as tragic as they may be, bring us together in ways I never thought possible. It shouldn’t take this to make us listen to one another. We should already be doing that. We forget the consequences of our actions too quickly.

And that is when we lose hope.

This weekend I made tacos with a group of lively children and teenagers. All of them were from Liberia, and they came to Chicago as refugees. As we, the volunteers, stood in our DePaul Interfaith Council T-shirts, we conversed with them. Once in a while, we’d laugh at them, and they at us. Afterwards, I learned about what brought them here. What tore them from their homeland.

And without hope, I don’t where they would be.

They taught me hope. Just the few moments I spent with them, I was reminded that life renews itself. That life moves on.