If throughout the developed world, Sunday is lived peacefully as a "day of peace", in our small Albania this calendar day does not know this breath. While I bring to mind peace, I do not mean here what it literally means, but rest as something essential and necessary for man. Not only to relax from the burden of the week as a physiological need, but deeply and psychologically to stop, to reflect and develop oneself. A quality time culturally missing in our country.
What happened in Durres shocked not a few, big and small, a madness beyond the limits of even the abnormal for a world in 2026. A grave tragedy for two lives that even the expression that the journey was cut short does not fit... the little ones had not even started!
While the other is still fighting not only for himself but also for his two other friends. This is how it happened! Playing in front of your house, from a normal activity suddenly turns into a fatal danger. This is the reality; a car with a drunk driver and facing a system that failed to prevent, what everyone called "warned".
The journalistic reading would reduce the event to facts by trivializing it with the questions who, when, how and where. But the most essential question that must be raised is “why?”. Because the phenomenon has come to life in us. And it is the phenomenon that produces it.
In a society with numerous social problems, nothing happens by chance. It begins and slowly wears itself out until it collapses. The lack of trust in institutions, the widespread mediocrity in every structure, selective justice, the low level of education and the lack of meritocracy undoubtedly bring a climate of frustration. A frustration that, although it may not be fully articulated, is present in everyday life through language, arrogant behavior and the way people see each other.
In this sense, every such massacre is not just an individual failure but a collective symptom, that in that overall chain of well-functioning, the links seem to be limping. Not to mention that most are missing altogether.
A society that fails to channel its energy constructively will explode it into destructive circumstances. This is our Albanian environment, an environment that does not have the reasonable sense that one's freedom ends where another's right begins. It is precisely this chaotic society that seeks solutions without trying to understand that it must change.
Another dimension of it is the normalization of chaos, destruction, misery, impoverishment or even dehumanization. When such events for years begin to seem “ordinary”, when such massacres pass with great media noise within three days, when the news “drowns” the news, then we are in an even more dangerous phase: it is called indifference. The latter, together with forgetting as one of our most “fantastic” abilities, constitute the most fertile ground for the repetition of the same history. Thus, unable to learn from the past.
The question that arises in these cases is: when such tragedies recur, is this an accident or a phenomenon?
This is related to how we conceive of our society. Is it a community of individuals with shared responsibilities or a space where everyone tries to survive on their own?
The children did not die just from being hit by a car. But above all, from the decline in the value of life in this country, the normalization of risk, the gradual indifference to every link in the system that escalates day by day, and even the silence in the face of lawbreaking when such 'traitors' challenge it.
Durrës was no coincidence. It was a reflection, even a signal or a call, of how many more lives our society needs to establish order and awareness.
Because it is certain that the tragedy will be even greater if what happened yesterday can definitely be repeated tomorrow.