Hannah Ahlers, 34 years old, stay-at-home mom, volunteer, wife, mother of three–dead.

Charleston Hartfield, 34 years old, veteran, police officer, husband, father of two–dead.

Quinton Robbins, 20 years old, college freshman, snowboarder, brother, son–dead.

Along with 55 other names.

I scrolled through the list of the dead posted by USA Today, reading name, after name, feeling tears swell up in my eyes. I never knew any of these people, but I know they were people. People with families, with friends, with lives. People who will never come back. But this tragedy is nothing new.

Oct. 2, 2017 may go down in history as the largest mass shooting our country has experienced, but as I watch the breaking news stories flash across my screen each day, my eyes are opened to an endless stream of pointless bloodshed, tragedy and no solution in sight. This realization is sickening, but it is our reality.

A Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas, which was meant to be an experience filled with joy, laughter and music, became the site of the death for 58 human beings and injury for 515 others. This atrocity is thanks to one man. One man who knew the consequences of his actions. One man who had no apparent motive to take the lives of innocent people. One man who took his own life to avoid the retaliation he knew he was bound to receive.

His actions were born of malice, and his death was filled with cowardice. But he is not the only one. Exactly one week after the shootout in Las Vegas, a police officer was shot and killed by a 19-year-old Texas Tech student. Because of drugs. Charged with capital murder, Hollis Daniels transformed from a freshman student to a nationally-known criminal. This all happened two hours from home.

Aliso Viejo, California. Oct. 12. Two dead. Little Rock, Arkansas. Oct. 14. One dead. Wilmington, Delaware. Oct. 18. Three dead. I continue to scroll through various news channels. Lake County, California, 15 hours ago. Two dead. Will it never end?

Many will speak of these horrors as a direct effect of our Second Amendment. Many will call to attention to perceived corruption–of gun use, of police officers and first responders, of our president for his responses to these tragedies. I do not. Instead, I call to attention the corruption of our world.

What has the world come to? What has happened to provoke such violence and terror? What can we do to stop it?

I do not know the answers to any of these questions swimming through the minds of our country’s citizens, drowning their thoughts in grief, but I do know what I am going to do about it.

I am going to pray. I am going to love. I am going to share light and goodness and kindness. And I am going to encourage you to do the same.

We cannot change the past. We cannot change others. But we can change ourselves. In a world full of darkness and terror, what is there to do but be there for one another?