terrshee's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commuting Suddenly Got Less Routine

I was listening to the news this morning and it really hit me that the London transit bombings last week were the work of suicide bombers. Forget the contention of the Bush administration that these are homocide bombers. It has nothing to do with killing other people and everything to do with killing yourself in a literal blaze of glory. The fact that other human beings get caught in the explosion is almost incidental.

I also realized that I'm now, not exactly afraid or nervous about my daily commute, but very, very conscious. I'm awake not only to the vague possibility that a bomb attack will take place, but that it is a near certainty. I find myself looking at all the passengers with their bags full of necessities and thinking how easy indeed it would be to just slip one harmful one in the lot.

I'm a fatalist about the whole idea of getting blown up; if it happens, it happens. I consider my chances of being run over by a reckless driver or suffering a random heart attack far greater. Death comes for you when it comes; there's no point in courting it, but our time in this existence is limited. Most of the tragedy of death is in people's avoidance of the reality rather than our common fate. I guess that is my Buddhist beliefs talking. Life is filled with loss, why fight it when you can accept and transcend? Easy to say, Everest climbing hard to do.

In any case, it is no original thought to contemplate the irony of defending the freedoms that allow an attack to take place while the same freedoms are being used as a weapon against the innocent. To some extent we will always be bolting the barn door after the horse is gone, but I'd rather that than the horse never having a chance to run at all.

6:38 a.m. - 2005-07-14
0 comments

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

past tense - always tense - future tense