London Bombings: One Year After

I don't know why but I wasn't afraid after 9/11. I was after the London bombing.

7/7 made me realize how inevitable it is that more attacks will happen and more innocent people will die. It also made me realize something frightening: That ordinary people can and will become suicide bombers. Some may even be idealists. Manipulated by others with darker aims, but ordinary people nonetheless. Of course, I don't agree with where their ideals take them. I don't say it's understandable in the sense it can be justified. But it can be understood in the framework of expected human behavior. And this is what frightens me.

Strange, I was in London and rode the tube about a week or so--two weeks?--after the bombing and I wasn't afraid. No one else appeared to be. How quickly things go back to normal for those who didn't suffer or weren't directly affected. For those affected, it's hard to imagine what they go through. But that's to be expected. We live in a world where we are constantly made aware of unthinkable tragedies and still we have to go collect the mail or eat a bowl of shredded wheat or everything else pointless or necessary.

Still, you have to stop sometime and think about it and today I did. There's nothing I can do from so far away to alleviate the pain of 52 people dead and so many people injured. I just it wish that wasn't so.