It happened when you were little; teasing the kid with the glasses while playing on the elementary school playground. It happened in your teen years, when you heard the snarky girls, whispering to each other and laughing while looking at you. It happens as an adult, as you hear about the most current murder, robbery or other tragedy. Violence is everywhere, in everyone. It happens every day, every minute: it is all over our world. It is sad, but the cold, hard, uncut truth is that somehow, sometime, somewhere violence will grab hold of your life and intertwine into your world.

Violence is inside everyone who doesn’t try to fight it. Sometimes it hides, sometimes it is right up front, and sometimes, you can’t tell. But what is violence? In my opinion, it is the simple act of one person hurting another, mentally or physically. Everyone has the ability to be a violent person, but the people who care, the ones who have their minds set straight, know to fight it and rebel against it, they know to try to be as caring, kind, and careful to not hurt anybody. Look into history, the incredible capability of a person to be a murderer is shown clearly in a huge amount of historical events. One of the most obvious events being the holocaust in Nazi Germany. Over six million Jewish people were killed even though they were innocent, and this is absolutely depressing. The fact that one human, Adolf Hitler, could cause the death of so many people is almost incomprehensible. The thought that anybody could have the hate in their heart to be that violent is scary, but true. Everyone can be violent.

Violence, as stated above, is not just physical either. I strongly believe that violence can be words, who can deny that a strong set of brutal words can hurt just as much as a punch to the gut? I can not. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”-A children’s rhyme that we have all heard. But is it true? No, it is not. In my junior high, I can plainly see this. As I walk through the halls I am bombarded with unknown, hurt voices of teenage girls, “Did she really say that about me?” or the hushed whispers of “Ugh she is so weird, look what she is wearing,” and who can say that the pain in the first girls voice can not be compared to the pain after being kicked or hit? Who can not agree that the whispers of the second girl do not install pain? The physical, fist fight, “beating up” violence is not the only kind, words affect too.

Finally, the fact that violence is everywhere and almost unstoppable is undeniable. Right now, if you were to look at the news, you would see most of it relating the most current deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan, you would see a story about the murder or suicide of a person and their families response. You would see that violence is in every life around the world and that violence will always be around. The savagery that we call violence will always be grabbing onto the foundation of a life and attempting to shred it apart, leaving disaster in its wake. It will never be totally fixed; the people of earth will never be in total agreement, there will always be conflicts that need fixing, so people will always be looking for ways to solve those conflicts, and violence will always be a option.

We all have the ability to hurt another person. We have all done it, and we have all been hurt at one time or another. It is everywhere, and not just the kind that hurts us physically, the brutality that can damage a persons entire world can assault them mentally as well. And all of this will continue, unless we all fight it. Unless we can fight the almost unstoppable force that is causing tons of deaths every year and have the sense to just try and be kind to the people you meet. If violence is a chain effect then can kindness not be one as well? To be kind is to spread it around to everyone you encounter. We can change the wold, we can stop the pain, we just have to try.