There’s something special and strange about living in Washington, DC, something until recently most Americans never understood: living under constant threat of violence.
I’m not talking about the threat of violence inherent in any urban living scenario; after all, where there are human beings with varying ranges of economic abilities, there’s alcohol or other substances, or, hell, where there is just a large enough group of people there is always the threat of interpersonal violence. No, I’m talking about the world annihilating mass destruction, major damage kind of violence. In the 1980s, when Cowboy Ronnie was President it was all about global thermonuclear war. These days it’s less about MIRVs and more about people with access to the Internet, a small amount of cash, a backpack, and a grudge. Yes, I’m talking about the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
There is a section of the Metro line I ride every day I’ve always found particularly scary. It’s outdoors and elevated and on the way home from work it’s a banked incline. Every now and then the train will have to stop there to “hold for schedule adjustments.” I don’t mind holding for schedule adjustments but holding 100+ feet in the air, banked so the train isn’t level, on an incline isn’t so comforting. I’ve seen enough movies to be able to visualize from the outside what that train would look like exploding as it hit that particular point in the track and that wasn’t an especially comforting image riding home Monday night reeling from the news out of Boston as everyone around me obsessively checked their phones.
My first thought was it was possible this could happen here, or anywhere in DC for that matter as this city, my home, has always been a primary target for politically motivated violence. My next thought, right on the heels of the first was the image, the explosion, the fireball, the sound it would make. My last thought was: do my loved ones know I care about them? Have I told and shown TGF I love her? Does my mother know I appreciate her and everything she’s done for me? Do my friends, new and old, understand how much I value our relationships and the time they’ve spent with me?
Except, it turns out that wasn’t my last thought. My last thought on the matter didn’t come until the next day when a co-worker at SmallAgency who went to school in Boston sent me a link to a blog post a college friend of his had written on his reactions to the bombing.
We get and have gotten since September 11, 2001 a lot of bullshit about not being afraid when something like this happens, about how being afraid means “the terrorists have won.” My co-worker’s friend rightly points out that the human reaction to something like this is fear. He also asks how much of our humanity we have to sell, ignore, or out right deny just to keep getting through our daily lives.
What he doesn’t explore is how to embrace that fear, which I think we must, and use it to motivate us to live better. And this, how to accomplish this, was my last thought.
One way I plan on doing it is to embrace the idea that you should never pass up an opportunity to do something fun, what I call the “take the scenic route” approach to life. The main way I plan on doing this, though, is to make sure I take the time to let the people I care for know I care for them. Life is too uncertain not to.
