I Don't Get It

I will try to get beyond the "deeply saddened", "angered" "in my thoughts and prayers" in regards to the bombings in London.

What I can't stop thinking about is that these people were starting their workday, much like I did this morning. They got on the train to go to work, and on that particular day, someone decided their lives meant nothing. Rather, someone took their lives to make a point about a principle that had nothing to do with them at all. As though their lives meant nothing. All that these people struggled with, yearned for and accomplished. All that they never had a chance to finish. Things they never had a chance to say. The people that will never hear them. Unfinished business. Their lives.

I don't understand how a person can become the enemy by default. I like to think I am a decent person. I am certain that the people killed and injured and scarred for life were decent people. How did we all unwittingly enter a war with no geographic boundaries, no heroes, no principle that I can understand, and no apparent end in sight. Insidious. Like cancer. It gets in your head and turns you bitter and angry and hard.

I get that the terrorists don't like the way we live. I'm not crazy about the way I live some days. Some days it seems that there is very little about this life that is a result of my own intention, but rather a result of the circumsances in which I was born. The Century, the Planet, the Country, the City, the Family. Fuck if I know why I am where I am, and why I didn't end up a particle in a comet, or an ant in the rainforest, or a girl born in China to parents who didn't want me because I wasn't a boy.

I once read a book called "The Stand" by Stephen King that scared the motherloving tar out of me. It had to do with the end of days and the few people that remained after the fallout. Some had a calling to one side, and some had a calling to the other. Most of the poor fools that were left didn't know exactly which was which for a long time. At the time I wondered if I would feel the pull to the good side or the bad. I would hope to think the good. It seems some days that there is so much that I do and use and take for granted and comsume that I can see how a person would get confused about where the good side actually is. I can see how the line between good and bad can be muddled and how a person could get confused.

I have seen people use religion and turn it into an ugly, dark, sinister thing. It happens in America. Maybe it's when you assume you are on the right side, without giving much thought to it, maybe that's when a person gets in trouble. Perhaps that is where the quagmire begins. When people claim to know what they couldn't possibly know, and then start pointing fingers at those who don't fall in line. Beacuse they're scared and it makes them feel safe to tell themselves that they know. To tell others they had better watch out and live right.

I don't get it. I am sad that people keep dying for the confusion.
My support for all of England, in particular, those affected by the violence.