Sometimes on the subway I see men with a backpacks that look a little too suspicious for my comfort. I breathe deep and stare into the eyes of my reflection against the black walls whizzing by and try to convince myself I’m as calm as I look. If it’s crowded, I stare at the hand next to mine on the pole in the middle of the car and try to sense the humanity carried in those fingers. Or I try to catch the eye the little kid rocking back and forth on his seat taking in the world around him with such innocence that I feel myself longing to be held in that fearless gaze for only a moment. Sometimes this will be enough. Sometimes I remember all the beauty in the world and I can smile and stop worrying about every little thing. Sometimes I get off at the next stop and decide to walk.
When I was little I would lie in bed at night and listen for the footsteps of the kidnapper coming to take me away from my family. I would practice breathing as shallow as I could so maybe they would look in and mistake the lump under the covers for lifeless pillows then move on to the next house. As I got older I rationalized my fears by coming up with carefully constructed escape plans. Run to my sister’s room, pull the both of us onto the roof through her window, slide down the roof behind the bushes, run for the woods through the trees to the neighbors on the other side. Once I had gone over the plan in my head I could fall asleep in peace.
Even now, walking through the streets of New York, I have a little safety plan running over and over in my head. It’s like a security blanket that lets me wander through crowds of people I don’t know with the tiniest bit of hope that if anyone tried to hurt me, I would make it out alive. In a world where terrorist attacks, rapists, and gun violence are splashed across front pages and dominating the news coverage, to some my little “escape plan” may make me seem hopeful, young, and naïve to believe that I can protect myself. But hope is important. I’d rather walk around believing that if the laws of society or government can’t protect me, at least I can protect myself. Because the drive to keep moving forward in the face of fear and sadness has to come from all of us believing in ourselves. We have to stand back up. We have to believe in the good and we have to hope for the best. If we shrink away from what we’re afraid of and begin to compromise our own lives by accommodating these fears, by letting them scare us out of living the way we want to, the problems of the world will only increase faster than they already are.
As the horrors of the world we live in are broadcasted all around us, we have to try to move past being afraid. And yes, the closer to home that tragedy hits, the easier it is to spend our days worrying about the safety of ourselves and the people we love, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we might give up pieces of our lives to protect each other. So maybe sometimes when the hairs tingle on the back of our necks, we remove ourselves from situations that don't sit quite right. Or maybe some days, with tragedy ringing in our ears, we walk around a little more on edge with an acute awareness and inherent distrust. But we can also walk around and recognize how much beauty is in life and in the world we are constantly creating. And we can pray that this is enough of a reason to never give up hope.
