Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-09-18 - 8:45 a.m.

Back and Forth

May I be excused? My brain is full.

I don't want to read or think or feel any more about the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or the Attack on America or the Taliban or Osama Bin Laden or brave rescue workers or searching families or patriotism or pain.

And then I feel horribly horribly guilty about feeling like this, because I am so unfairly privileged to be ABLE to stop thinking about it, and so unbearably spoiled as to want to, when there are so many others who will never be able to stop... and of course there's no reason why I should have been so lucky when other people weren't.

And then I think that guilt has only one use, and that is to trigger a change in behavior - if you feel guilty about something, change what needs changing, and let go of the rest. And the only thing I can do that's real is to try to live my life in a way that is closer to my ideals, love the things well that have been given to me to love, do the things that are mine to do.

And then I feel ashamed because the life I want to return to is made up of small things, nothing grand, nothing noble. Because the entry I wrote the day before the devastation was whiny and petty, complaining about my little problems and my inconsequential feelings, and it's embarrassing. Because my life is all about what's for dinner and not having enough money and wishing I had DSL or a cell phone and always being behind on the laundry.

And then I think that the lives that people lost were made up of all these same things.

And then I think that it's unbearably egotistical to think that my mourning makes any difference at all to those who have been given truly unbearable sorrow and loss. And it's insulting to think that these people would be so small as to want other people to be destroyed by their losses.

And then I read of those who want desperately for their own pain to be expunged by seeing others destroyed.

And then I feel stupid because I am woefully politically uninformed and I can't join in these discussions around me about world history and factions and alliances and tensions, and because I have nothing more sophisticated to offer than a childish despairing hope for world peace.

And then I feel angry because I think many of those who engage in these discussions loudly and vehemently do not know that much more than I do, and because I am not really sure that anyone's yearning for peace should be dismissed as childish.

And then I think my brain is full and I don't want to hear or think or feel any more about it now.

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