Imagine grabbing your friends and family – making a day of it.

Imagine planning to catch up with people you haven’t had a chance to see in years – an old school friend or a cousin who moved out of town years ago.

Picture you and your reunion heading down town to Baylis Street for a gathering to celebrate what it means to be Australian – the freedoms and opportunities we can sometimes take for granted. Focus on the look on your friend’s face enjoying a rare moment where they are not worrying about meeting a deadline at work, or what they have to cook for dinner.

Imagine that person being run over by a truck in that moment, along with 83 others.

It’s not difficult to put yourself at the horrific scene on Bastille Day in Nice, France.

But now try to picture this: You’re in a coffee shop with a bunch of friends on a sunny, hot Sunday evening.

It’s busy – there are people everywhere even though it is late.

Then a flash, then heat, then nothing.

More than 300 human beings died after a truck bomb exploded in a crowded shopping district in Baghdad only a fortnight ago – during Ramadan.

It is the worst attack in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Then, four days later, at least 40 were killed at a Shia shrine near Baghdad, then, a few days later, another 12 living beings’ lives were cut short in a suicide car bombing, then, a few days later, at least 10 more lives were lost at a police checkpoint.

Why does it seem that these lives mean less than the ones who perished in France?

Is it that we can relate to an act of terror on a Western country better? Do we empathise and see ourselves in those who are suffering immeasurably?

Those at least 362 people who have died on Iraq streets are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, loving wives and husbands and friends to a network of people left behind – no different to those in France, or Turkey, or the US, or right here on Baylis Street.

Dr Seuss said it best when Horton heard a Who – “A person’s a person, no matter how small”.

While he might have been talking literally about a being of small stature, it’s a good reminder not to forget the figuratively small people struggling with the unimaginable in this world.

They are the same as you and me.