Despite all of life's difficulties, when I can remember to think philosophically, it is a bowl of cherries. Today is 9/11. When this dreadful tragedy occurred, like billions of others, I was NOT on the scene. When the first plane hit one of the towers, nobody really knew what was going on. In my workplace, the word spread that something had occurred in Manhattan. As a result, I turned on my office TV just in time to see another plane hit another tower. Then we figured it out.
Everyone reacted differently. Some immediately panicked; others took it in stride.Some worried; others regarded it randomly. Some felt an instant patriotism that lasted for a time; some still feel it. Others just felt sick. Inside President Bush's government, a small group exploited it and led us on an expensive wild goose chase that we still suffer from and that the perpetrators distance themselves from. Essentially, they hijacked the hijacking. Meanwhile, frankly, it has been President Obama who has straightened out Al-Qaeda.
Random acts of violence are horrific, happen too frequently, and cannot be avoided. Once upon a time, when something bad happened, we used a peculiar old-fashioned word to describe it: an accident. 9/11, with all its planning, all its miraculously lucky fiendishness, all our faulty intelligence, and all the time to examine it from afar, was an extraordinary accident.
Lives were altered; this is an understatement. However, we are just bugs in the grand scheme -- wasps. And life is a bowl of cherries.
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