I took my dog for a walk the day the bombs hit in London. I felt sadder than I had in a long time. I’ve always been a bit of a fanatic about England. Charles Dickens is my favorite author, closely followed by Jane Austin, Thackeray and all the Bronte’s. I am a charter subscriber to a magazine called British Heritage and I actually read each issue cover to cover.
One of the best afternoons of my life was spent at Old Bailey in London attending the murder trial of a man who was a British Hell’s Angel. I loved the absolute disconnect in the court between the wigs worn by the barristers, the gowns worn by the judge, the medieval attire of the guard and the leather and chains of the defendant. Only in England could a Hell’s Angel murder suspect come across sounding so erudite.
If you travel at all in England off the beaten tourist paths, one of the things that strikes most forcibly is how so much of England still carries such a rural, 1800’s country feeling. People still live in small villages and hamlets and town squares are still green grass that once was the communal feeding place for village livestock. Tea is still taken in small shops and pets and gardens still dominate life.
Despite its modern flavor in big cities, despite its abysmal ugliness in its industrial towns, England is still, as Shakespeare wrote in Richard II,
“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself”.
Unfortunately, that fortress is no protection against terrorists, just as our oceans no longer isolate us from their reach. Each and every day that we get up, get on a bus or subway or get in our car and go to work we are making a leap of faith. We are betting that this day we will come home again and our families and pets will be there to greet us and the worse thing we’ll have to deal with is whether or not to have take-out again.
That’s what terrorism has done to our world. But what the terrorists apparently still don’t get is that each time they destroy a piece of our world, we just dig in and fortify ourselves even more for the long haul. Because ultimately, whether we agree we our politicians or not, whether we like the amount of taxes we pay or not, whether we are bitching and griping about the latest road closure that keeps us from a quick trip to the cabin, we like our lives and our world and we aren’t going to let anyone change it through a bomb.
So there I was on my walk with my dog. I passed others walking and biking with and without pets. Men and women and children, families and friends, enjoying the freedom we take for granted 99.9% of the time – the freedom to walk down a street without fear that the next car will contain a suicide bomber; the freedom to be a woman walking down the street without fear that men will beat you because you are out without a male relative; the freedom to just mow your lawn and water your flowers in peace and safety.
Part of the problem for the terrorists is that they have created a society that denies full humanity to over 50% of its population. Women have always been, and will continue to be, the gentling force that helps move civilization to the next level. Without their yin to the male yang, you have a civilization totally out of balance, one that falls over into viciousness much too easily. Check out early medieval European history if you have any doubt about that.
England will survive this attack just like America survived Sept. 11. We will all survive because we will not give up the life we so treasure – a life not defined by big things but by the everyday little moments that make up all our lives.
As always in time of war, Churchill said it best, “Never give in – never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
We never will.