Sirens
"The loss of the sense of safety is impossible to imagine when you still possess it, and nearly impossible to regain once you have lost it. The sense of safety is not at all like the other senses – smell, taste, sight. It has no companion that can compensate for its absence. It stands alone, beneath, like the foundation below ground that supports a building. When the sense of safety and bodily autonomy has been destroyed, all that it supports crumbles. Its loss changes the relation between self and the world."
Nancy Venable Raines
On December 12, 2012, I kept working.
On September 11, 2001, I kept working.
I suppose it’s just my way of insisting that those who end lives will not end mine. I become an anchor. Little ‘ole me. And so…I kept working. Not because I don’t care but because I do.
I believe that each of us has the power, simply with attitude and perspective, to change the course of events. The problem with that is that tragic event such as Sandy Hook effect each one of us in profound ways making this all the harder to do. It wasn’t at all easy to keep working on Monday when, for 15 solid minutes, I heard sirens headed in the direction of the middle school where my two youngest attend the 7th grade in my small suburban town. That event and the tragic loss of life changed me internally. I felt less safe than a few days before. But, after I shook my initial fear off and refused to be lured by those sirens I kept working, and hope that we will all do the same – toward understanding, reason, patience, discernment and the ability to finally ACT after choosing to make a change.