“Fight back. Bad people are still out there. If you don’t stop them… who will?”
– Kelly Gibbs, NCIS
Season 13, Episode 1, “Stop the Bleeding”

In this scene, Gibbs has been badly hurt and is in surgery. He is, at the moment, conversing with the spirit of his daughter, who was murdered twenty-something years ago. He’s spent a lot of time hurting from that loss, and it’s part of why he joined NCIS, then called NIS. He’s brought a lot of murderers and terrorists to justice over the years, and his spirit has been thoroughly worn down. Now on the brink of death, Kelly comes to visit him, telling him he needs to stop looking back all the time, and start looking forward. He still has work to do, protecting the innocent and serving justice.

It is most poetic that these words are coming from a girl who was murdered in cold blood. It is in the name of such people that we fight to apprehend their murderers. But there’s another message here: it’s not just about the dead, it’s about the living. Right now, good people all over the world are just trying to live their lives in peace and happiness. But they are constantly threatened by bad people, malicious people, who think they can just take anything they want. If bad people are allowed to run free, good people can’t keep their peaceful lives. Someone needs to stop them.

And that task falls to every last one of us.

All that evil needs to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

The world likes to tell us that we need to just mind our own business, that what happens to our neighbors is of no concern to us. But it is. Not only is it our sacred duty to help them, but it is our one and only hope for peace: to fight back. You think there’s nothing you can do? Find a way. Somehow, some way, fight back. Do what you can, whatever you know how to do, take a leap of faith. Fight back. If you don’t… who will? You can’t leave it to someone else to take care of. You need to do something. Fight back.

As long as there are bad people hurting good people, fight back.

If no one fights back, it’s impossible for us to win.

If all of us fight back, it’s impossible for us to lose.