www.simoncollier.ca

I wonder sometimes what the other me is doing. The one that took the path that was set for him, instead of crouching onto the easier road.

Is he happier? Is he more fulfilled? Or is he sitting exactly where I am now, having taken another route to the same destination.

Perhaps that’s all it is. We can stray from our designed path and stumble into chaos and violence, but we ultimately meander back to it, rejoining our intended life. Never better for it, not really. But back.

I suspect I may have ended up here anyway, working where I work at least. But the last two years of my life would have been completely different.

Maybe I’d be married. Maybe I’d have children. Maybe my father-in-law would frown because I don’t have a degree, or maybe I would have published my first book and be finishing my course now.

Maybe I wouldn’t be this damaged, this hollow. I wonder if I can give to a relationship – any relationship – what I once could.

Or maybe, for the rest of my life, I’ll be going through the motions.

It was going to happen eventually, nobody denies that. It was a tragic, untargeted, frustrating loss of life.

The bomb blasts in London raise some interesting points, though.

Dark Clouds
1. Why a series of bomb blasts in tube trains? If they were planning to do it that way, why such small blasts? Surely there were hundreds of people around, either on the train or at the station. The number of deaths from each blast were relatively few (compared to the attack on the Twin Towers, for example). Why not bomb a football stadium, or fly a plane into the Live-8 concert? It seems like a far smaller scale than the American attacks; I’m very glad that it was a smaller attack, but it makes me question the identity of the group claiming to have done this. Of course, this is the “new” young and trendy Al Qaeda; the group that slipped past security in Madrid because they are shaved, smoking, boozing and European-styled for sneakier operations.

2. Why was there one bomb, and only one bomb, on a bus? Was it being transported to another train station and accidently exploded? Was it by another group, and just sheer coincidence it was so close in time and proximity to the other explosions? It just doesn’t seem to match.

3. Why are we making as big a deal of it as we are? It’s a terrible thing, and we all should be aware of the facts, but it seems to me that by making it a continuous headline we simply prolong the terror, allowing it to seep further into our lives and our thoughts. I believe the information should be there, and in truth I read the stories myself, I just worry about the consequences.

Silver Lining
4. Britain has been bombed by terrorist for years, this isn’t a new thing.

That is why Britain will seek the criminals and jail them, but not begin a new war to seek vengeance. Despite Bush using this as a PR vehicle to push his “war on terror”.

5. It occurred to me how closely connected the world is now. By the time I visited the BBC website to find more information, there were already photos and videos online that people had taken using their cell phones, at the scene, as it happened. I have never known this before!

In Summary
While the points above interest me, there’s no escaping the emotion of the situation: This bombing spree is horrible, calculated, viscous and fruitless. What a sad waste of human life. Will we never learn?