When someone’s values don’t line up with mine, I don’t shoot them. If I feel oddly about the way another lives their life, I imagine what it would be like to walk in their shoes. When I believe in something very strongly, that belief and passion never involves violence or hatred.

The tilting of our world over the last few months has thrown me completely off balance, unable to make sense of it and left with far more questions than answers. An internal struggle that feels like a pain in my gut.

There are many paths for us humans to follow now. We could rush down an avenue of hatred, fuelled every time another attack happens. We could lock our doors against this wave of unimaginable grief. We could feel sad for a while and then continue making tracks through it in the best ways we can. All of this, and none of it.

It feels to me that our humanity is being called upon from the depths of this earth, more strongly than I can ever recall. It feels so important that right now we stand, speak, whisper, touch, shout, share all of the best things about being human. The energy at Martin Place in Sydney before Christmas was personal, palpable, painful and full of quiet purpose. The #i’llridewithyou campaign was the most perfect and clever response to that act of terror. The French are holding hands together all over the world, reeling and shocked. The complex web that holds us together has never needed us more. It is possible to push our energy into a place that can help tilt this earth into a place of peace.