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When I was younger, I was shocked to find out we had friends who didn’t own a TV. True, our television at the time was a static-y, rabbit-eared box, but we still had PBS Kids and America’s Funniest Home Videos and that’s all that matters, right? Our friends had never seen Cyber Chase, or Dragon Tales, or the video of the the dog singing along to “Happy Birthday�. Quite frankly, they were weird. And they made us feel like we had a world of knowledge under our fingertips (and in our remotes).

Our friends� parents had a very simple reason for not owning a TV: They wanted to be the ones to tell their kids about what was going on in the world. When 9/11 happened, it wasn’t a blowup of videos, chaos, and shouting reporters that broke the news to their stunned little ones that someone had hurt their country. It was the parents, calmly sitting down with stories and tears and prayers. I’m sure it was the same with the VA Tech shooting of 2007, or Boston marathon bombing of 2013, or all the other events that scarred our childhoods with blood and horror. Instead of the news seeping fear and panic into the hearts of their children, these parents wanted to be able to approach their kids with answers from the Bible about all the pain they found in the world.

To this day, I’m still not sure what I think about this family’s approach to television and media. I like the idea of my future kids watching the nightly news with me one day. I hope they are at least fairly knowledgeable about what’s going on, even if I still want to be the one they come to with their questions. But I do find myself wondering every time something blows up in the media, what this family, with their now-teenagers and budding adults, are saying about it.

I remember news stories that rocked and crushed me and the reporters I first saw talking about it. I remember being sent into the other room during 9/11 and hearing Matt Lauer’s voice coming from the living room. I heard about the VA Tech shootings on the radio on my way to dance class and moms with family members on campus were crying when I got there. The Boston marathon bombing reports were streaming live while we were preparing dinner one night, and we all followed the reports while slicing veggies and browning meat. But the only phenomenon I remember discovering and researching myself were the more recent shootings and riots caused by the deaths of several black men (and teens) by white police officers within this past year.

Maybe my dad was out of town or I was too busy to sit in front of the TV these last few months, but almost everything I’ve learned about these shootings and protests have been online. I’ve read so many articles and reports, from witnesses to journalists to bloggers to friends. Everywhere I look on social media seems to be saturated with the pain and hurt these deaths have caused. And it’s made me sad to read about it. I want to exit the websites, to block the notifications, to metaphorically “throw away the TV� on this whole thing. Not because I don’t care, but because I care so much. It makes me so sad to think about the people who have hurt each other. About the lives that have been ended. About the years of prejudice and stifled anger and frustration and shame that have just boiled under the surface and erupted in the final splitting open of the wound.

You’ll find it almost anywhere these days–the worldwide hurt and insistence that yes, it’s true.

Why do we believe that black lives matter?

Because we look at these cities, these homes, these faces–and we see stories. We see report cards and sleepless nights and paychecks and baby cries in hospital rooms and flat tires on the asphalt and the heat and struggle of growing up as a black man or black woman in 21st century America. For the first time, Caucasian Americans are starting to realize that there is no hierarchy of importance in this world. Our lives are tangled and dotted with the same knots and colors and one man’s struggle is as real as the next. Black lives matter because, in the end, they are still lives. Heartbeats and yawns and belly laughs and first kisses and first fights and first victories and first defeats. That’s what makes it a life. And it’s something we all were given, no matter the color of our skin or the shape of our faces.

However, it’s the realization of this very fact that makes #BlackLivesMatter not only a victory, but a tragic defeat. Because while America may have finally woken up and realized that all lives are equally important, we are still carrying out the largest massacre of those lives ever known in history.

My sister and mom both participated in a walk on Saturday to raise awareness of the lives of unborn babies that are being snatched away almost every minute of every day. I was thinking about this blog post in anticipation of their walk, and decided to do a little research. A few sources online informed me that approximately 400 black men were shot and killed by white police officers in 2014. That’s 400 lives that were ended abruptly, in the middle of high school or middle age or somewhere in between. However, approximately 1,200,000 babies are aborted in the US alone each year. That’s 1.2 million future men and women killed before they even reached high school or middle age or the golden years in between. Those babies hadn’t learned to identify as white or black yet There was nothing to make their lives difficult, nothing to give them a reason to hate or be angry at the world. They hadn’t seen their first movie in a theater or survived their first roller coaster ride or tried their first bite of chocolate cake. All those heartbeats and yawns and belly laughs and kisses were still waiting for them. All those things that we claim make a life important. And we didn’t let them experience a single one.

Why do black lives matter? Is it because you wanted that teenage boy to have the opportunity to grow up, to study, to get his high school diploma, to fly in an airplane while the sky turned orange, to find a nice girl and maybe get married? Do you want these things for him that you’ve felt yourself? Does your heart break at the thought of his life ending before it really began? Yeah. Mine does too. Because, at the end of the day, we know it’s true.

But why aren’t reporters talking about the 1.2 million lives that were lost last year, that no one seemed to think mattered? Did you not want them to have a chance to grow up, to study, to get diplomas and wedding rings and mortgages and diapers? Do you not care that they never had their ears pop in an airplane or feel cotton candy dissolve on their tongues? Does your heart not break at the thought of their lives ending before they ever began?

I have no idea how the family with no TV discusses the #BlackLivesMatter movement. But one, day, when I have kids, I’ll tell it to them like this:

When I was a young woman, I lived in a world that was horribly unfair and unkind to so many people. People hated and hurt and sometimes even killed each other. Approximately 400 black men were killed by white police officers the year I turned eighteen. Approximately 1.2 million babies died. They were wiped out in clinics with doctors in clean white coats and no one ever heard their heartbeat or listened to them laugh.

But that world I lived in wasn’t always cruel. There was beauty there. And, even in the death and hurting, there were some who cared. They saw this life as the gift it was, and they cared about the lives of others. Their cheeks were always wet. Their wallets were always empty. There was a daily pouring out. There were people who were willing to shovel out their hearts to protect the hearts of others, and those were the lives that mattered most of all. We all have one life, and we can spend it as we like. One day it will end, whether at the hands of a man, or a car, or a cancer. But those of us who protect the lives of others will always live again. Because even when we die, someone else will live on. Babies will grow up to be teenagers and college grads and young parents and grandparents. More lungs will be filled each day.

-Rachel

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