It is becoming Fear, it seems, is contagious. We observe and assimilate the terrible things that happen to other people
with astonishing ease nowadays. And now that the threat of terrorism is so immediate and present, it is
all but impossible to hang onto
That old feeling that used to come over us after we digested the news of
some catastrophe: in the old days, after the first dataset wave of shock and horror, of sympathy and compassion
for those directly affected, we would always slide into Phase 2 of our reaction, that of relief and inevitable
self-preservation: “At least it wasn’t me. It didn’t happen to me. I’m still here.”
As time goes by to separate ourselves from these events, to separate
ourselves from the people involved, and to avoid the fact that if “it wasn’t me” this time around, it was possibly
thanks to nothing more than a bit of dumb luck. And it has also become increasingly harder not to feel that
those who have died in a terrorist attack have unwittingly spared our lives
The survivor’s relief inevitably kicks in, of course, but it’s no longer quite as second nature as it once was.
Now it comes as a third or fourth reaction, one capital one 360 bank services that takes a bit longer to travel through the mind. On Thursday
evening, while watching the news on television, I heard the story of a young Spanish woman who had been riding
on one of the tube trains that had been bombed. She emerged from the wreckage practically unscathed, with
only some light bruises and scratches, but when everything went black just after the explosion, for a few moments that seemed to last forever she was not sure whether she was dead or alive – if she was “one of them” or not.
She was more inclined
To think she was dead and seems to remember turning sale leads to another traveler who,
she suddenly realized, was bathed in blood. Once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she was able to make
out several of her fellow passengers desperately searching for their lost limbs, feet and hands, in the darkness.