Eighteen years ago, 52 lives never made it to their places of work in London. That morning, the primary school’s secretary called me to the office around 9.15am, and broke the news that the city was under attack. I immediately left my classroom assistant role behind me and rushed over to the local hospital. My other role, albeit part-time, was as an adult ICU nurse. Standing in the corner of the Burns ICU, I set the dials on a ventilator, and prepared everything else necessary in ready for the bombing victims.
This morning soon after I arrived at work, I searched Google for anything in memory of 7/7/05, London’s bombings. It was quickly apparent, that even today, I take for granted that I arrive safely at work.
Scrolling through the articles, I had never before read the few sentences about each victim, or the several survivors’ accounts of that morning. It seems macabre to sit with such deep sadness at the end of a work week. Why voluntarily do so in times of division and chaos in our nation and world? Why go to a place of fear of not if but when it will happen again, and to me or my immediate community? As a human being, it’s natural to fight, fly, or retreat in instinct, to wrap one’s arms around our loved ones and attempt at keeping or home, our sanctuary, safe.
Several weeks ago, I came across a quote in the mediation App Insight Timer:
Safety is not the absence of threat. It’s the presence of connection.
Gabor Mate
This leads me to a place in my heart to ask if we, as the organism of humanity, will eventually see no need to threaten or harm others, and connect on all levels? Will we seek out each other’s names, stories, journeys, and dreams?
Will we arrive at a place (outside of a disaster like 7/7 or 9/11, where I read of victims helping the injured to safety or holding the hand of a lady taking her last breath) where we help each other in an ordinary moment in this extraordinary experience called life?
Will we arrive at a place of acceptance for all to go to work, build a home, build a future, love and be loved? Not just 7 times 7 but seventy times 7, I will long for this to come to completion.