I'm going to be as up front with you as possible. You all deserve my honesty and sincerity on a World Wide Web of possibilities, as many of them fake and imaginary as truthful.
I am feeling defeated.
These past 5 years have been fraught with economic instability, with revolutions, with bigotry, with slander, with death.
Fear seems to be the sole motivator of our society.
We fear our next pay check won't arrive in time.
We fear that the economy will fall again, leaving us behind even square 1.
We fear that our interventionist foreign policy will get us involved in another battle.
We are so economically and nationally exhausted from this fear that we in fact fear that we won't be able to win the next fight.
We fear that no one will understand us.
We fear that our rights will be taken away from us or somehow devalued if another person, political party, or some faction of people gain power.
We fear that if we are not right, then we're wrong.
We fear that if we take action, it will cause more problems than it solves.
I am so tired. I am so exhausted from this fear. I don't deserve to be living in fear. You don't deserve to be living in fear. We are not supposed to wake in the morning and be scared that we are going to die on our way to the airport or to a football game or to a marathon or to school.
And I don't have an answer to it. I can't explain why or how or what or when.
And so I do what we naturally do in times of fear. We look up to our leaders for our answers and for our actions.
"How could this happen?" we say.
"When will this happen next?"
"What are we doing about it?"
"What should I do?"
"How should I live?"
But the worst part is that they don't know either. They don't know and they can't act until they know because they are on a pedestal that is thousands upon thousands of kilometers above the jagged pit of our critical stares. We expect them to unify us, somehow, when we can't do it ourselves. We expect them to find some Other person to blame. We expect them to find us an outcast, someone to fight a perpetual war with.
Because it doesn't really matter, right? We're fighting for something, an idea perhaps. And even if we don't know what that idea is, then someone up the chain-of-command surely does and they just haven't been able to tell us yet.
Yeah, that's it.
My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the perpetrators of our fears.
Fourteen were injured by stabbing in Texas.
Three were killed and more than 120 were injured by bombs in Boston.
Thirty were killed and more than 100 injured by bombs in Afghanistan.
Fifty were killed and more than 200 injured by car bombs in Iraq.
Recently, news came out that bombs were discovered in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
North Korea has been stirring up trouble and bluffing its way into a corner since early 2013 which is unnerving because animals, people, and nations are always more dangerous when they are desperate.
But is that all I can really do? Can I really only send out my thoughts and prayers to those who need them? Must I look up to leaders who don't have answers? The answer is no. And you don't have to be stuck in a passive role either. I realize that in the past, a lot of my blogs have been about taking action, doing something visible and productive, getting out there in the world and maybe the world will follow your example. This time I am asking that you take a step back.
Take a deep breath. Look around. Close your eyes. Take another deep breath. Open your eyes. Look around again. Has anything changed?
Observing your environment and being conscious of your surroundings may often be more helpful than immediately running to someone's aid. This is especially true when we are in large crowds, which have a tendency to be the target of these terroristic attacks. I am of the opinion that people naturally care about each other. When something traumatic happens, we instinctively protect those in our immediate vicinity and make sure that they are safe before hurrying to provide assistance, relief, and comfort to those who were affected by the event.
What I am suggesting in no way devalues that kind of action. It is courageous and honorable and necessary. But in a large crowd, most people will do exactly that kind of action and our brains will subconsciously ignore anything that does not pertain to our provision of care to the injured. In other words, we're so busy helping people, Scumbag Brain deletes our surroundings and memories of other people from our consciousness.
You, by holding back the instinct to aid your fellow man for just a few minutes, can look around and observe the environment.
Is there anyone who is not reacting to the event, either by standing by and watching or walking away?
What looks out of place?
The answer to that question is purely subjective, but if you know the area well, then you could see if there are any cars driving away, cars without license plates, cars with out of state license plates, backpacks or luggage carriers or strange bulky packages that don't seem to belong to anyone that are placed on the ground where lots of people might bump into them.
Never forget to look up. Check windows, rooftops, glance into buildings if you can see their interiors. These are the most commonly neglected places to look immediately after an explosion goes off or someone starts shooting people at random.
Remember details. Take mental notes or just carry a pen around with you at all times. Your arms are awesome last-minute note pads. All of your observations are useless if you can't remember what you saw.
Find the police and tell them what you saw as soon as you can. Your short term memory is very sharp and the sooner the police have this information, the more accurate it will be and the sooner they can go about catching the bastards that did it.
I will be the first to say that action is the most effective form of change, but action comes in many forms and accurate observation is among the most powerful and definitely the most underestimated.
While my advice in the bold is mostly for what you can do after a traumatic event happens, you can always practice your observation. It's nearly impossible to tell when someone will jump on the crazy train and think it's a good time and place to kill everybody in the immediate area. Just noticing small things like someone putting things under cars or holding a conversation with themselves can be helpful because you may be able to prevent a traumatic event or to help a mentally disabled person find their way back to their care-taker.
Please stay safe. Please stay active. Please stay observant.
