The Absence of Movement

I am literally staring at a postcard of London posted on the backboard of my cubicle at work. It has an image of Big Ben with a double-decker bus in the foreground, a Royal guardsman, and a bridge along the Thames.

I was driving up from San Diego to pick up my Dad at LAX when I heard about the bombings on the morning of the 14th.

Later in the morning after being a little snippy towards my family my father mentions in Taiwanese that I'm not in a good mood.

Me: "No, I'm not. The news this morning about London upset me."

Dad: "Why did it upset you?"

Me: "It just did."

But in my head I'm thinking... Why does it NOT upset you? Shouldn't the horror of what happened upset everyone? Isn't that what it is to be human?
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe being human means coping by numbing yourself to anything that doesn't have to do with your immediate physical world within a span of a few miles. I hope not. But we humans are an odd bunch aren't we? All types. That's what makes us adaptable as a species.

For my friends in London I can only say that I'm speechless and enormously sad that the world has come to this. My heart goes out to you and your community. And I'm sure those who have seen horrors...those in Rwanda,other parts of Africa, Iraq, Jerusalem, Palestine, New York, North Korea, Ireland, China, Sarajevo...all sympathize with you.

In the midst of everything we move forward.

"We remember most the moments of abrupt stillness. Where the world seems to stop. For a second, a minute, or an hour. This is what draws our attention. Because we are a people of movement. It is not the movement that defines our lives. It is in the absence of movement where it is defined."

That's a paraphrase of a thought taught in during actor training. I'll leave this posting with that thought and let you make your own comments.