Wednesday, September 19, 2001
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Wednesday, September 19, 2001 |
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Perspective: What I know By BILLY MURPHY Perspective: What I know To be emotionally drained right now, to say the least, binds all Americans together like mice in maze. As we bounce from shock to hurt to fear to anger, none of us can feel fully confident about the same things we knew just a week ago. I am reminded of a lyric from Billy Corgan that says, "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage." To me, this sums up a lot of feelings among the population right now. If there is one thing we Americans have always had, it is the ability to control everything around us. Not so, the case now. I think we all feel like the senior citizen who has had his Viagra stolen away. There is a shadow of doubt cast over so much of what we always have depended. I am reminded of the missionary I once heard, telling of his life of strife, but finishing every phrase with hope and the Bible verse from II Timothy, chapter 1, "For I know whom I have believed." Some things never change; they only become clearer in the fog. To those who have lost loved ones, we can pour out our hearts. For those who have lost wives and husbands, sons and daughters, we can pray and we can pray hard. Not since the Civil War have we been the battlefield on which our own have been killed. I feel impotent, in that I can offer nothing new, no new thoughts or words or ideas how to rise from the ashes of this catastrophe. In some ways that is just how we can offer our respect, though. To just stop talking, to look inward, to face the silence head on. Mark Twain said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear not absence of fear." There has been too much fear to go around in the last seven days, roughly the same amount of time it takes Russell Crowe to break up a Hollywood marriage. There is little that shocks us anymore, yet we have been shocked. With cable piped into our homes 24/7 and every other e-mail carrying a link to every kind of wild Internet site, it is difficult even to get us to sit up and notice anything, anymore. The visual impact of Tuesday's events will stay with us for a long, long time, though. Even with the buffer of an e-mail from a friend that told me to, "Turn on your TV, a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center," I felt affected. I felt sickened when five minutes later, I got another e-mail that said, "I am sitting here watching TV and I just saw a second plan crash into the World Trade Center while I was watching!" By being at work, I was spared the horrible effects of seeing these events live. As each unfolding event sunk in, I felt like I was being covered with some sort of molten lava flowing slowly over my feelings. Our feelings are what we need to embrace right now. None of us likes to be forced to encounter who we are, deep down. This is why we lose ourselves in distractions. This is why institutions like Nintendo, Nascar, and shopping exist. It's gonna take a heck of a cocktail, real or otherwise, to make us forget the sadness of Sept. 11, 2001. None of us want to believe this is real. We want to hit rewind on our VCRs, click back our CD just a few tracks. There have always been second chances in this world we have so carefully crafted for ourselves. Not this time. So how do we deal with our anger? What is our anger even really about? I have no idea, personally. I don't even know when I will feel like my brain is hitting on all cylinders again. My protons are firing. It's just my neurons that have caught Amtrak to some hidden cave on some lost island, in some ocean that's never been discovered. As big as our country is, we have fallen pretty hard. But we are no Goliath. We will get back up. As the sun sets, we will stand again; and cast a larger shadow of power than anyone recalls that we ever had. Personally, though, will this retribution give us the peace we so long to have? I am glad mine is not dependant on any of the activities that reside in either of the two earthly hemispheres: "For I know whom I have believed." [Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at www.ebilly.net.]
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