Dear Internet,
The other day, an article was published entitled "Things New Yorkers are More Afraid of Than ISIS." The article, inspired by a slew of tweets, provides list after comical list of things that the residents of New York are supposedly significantly more afraid of than the threat of the terrorist group ISIS. These things include falling air conditioners, your friend becoming a member of an improv troupe, being hit in the face by a flying cockroach, or being stuck with your ex on the subway. The lists are hysterical, reflecting the resilience of New Yorkers with a friendly wink. But something about these lists struck me as slightly off-putting, especially since they were published the day after a pipe bomb exploded in a dumpster in Chelsea 3 blocks from where I live, and another bomb was discovered just a few blocks from there before it could detonate. It shook me to the core, and when I saw these articles I had to ask: am I a bad New Yorker if things like this are number one on my list of fears?
*****
I'm not exactly a going out person, so when my roommate and I decided that we were going to get dressed up and go somewhere fun, we were stoked. We spent an hour doing hair and makeup, excited to have some place to be going. As we were putting the finishing touches on our meticulously crafted looks, however, we heard about the bomb. The next thing we knew, we were at a friend's, sitting on the floor and blankly staring at the news on the television screen. Within minutes we were in pajamas, our plans of going out swallowed by bigger, more important things. We did our best to contact friends and family members to let them know we were safe before they could see the news that anything had happened at all, and reached out to those we knew who may have been near the explosion to make sure they were all okay. It was, to be honest, terrifying. I'm not used to being so close to tragedies such as these, so when it happened, it seemed to make everything else going on seem completely insignificant. Suddenly, the drama with our roommates or the quality of our curls was petty compared to what was going on in the world around us. We were scared. If we had decided to go out just an hour earlier, how could things have been different? Would we have been near the bomb? These are the things we asked ourselves as we stared in amazement at the news, waiting for answers we would never receive.
But were we bad New Yorkers for being so afraid? Are there really hundreds of other things in the city scarier than threats of terrorism occurring just blocks from where you live? I'm not so sure. Even funnier to me than these lists of things to be more afraid of in this city than ISIS is the idea that there are things to be more afraid of. Perhaps that's what makes these lists so amusing for me: there really isn't anything scarier than terrorism in the city, but it's simply more fun to pretend there is, isn't it? Perhaps it isn't that we do not fear these things at all, but that we are so open about fearing them that we allow ourselves to be in on the joke of these articles.
The community in New York City has a deep resilience unlike anything I've ever seen before. The second word of a bomb going off got out, my phone started to blow up with texts from close friends and mere acquaintances asking if I was okay. Everyone started to check up on each other--and I mean everyone. I don't think I could say that the same thing would happen in every place. When this happened, the people of New York started to rise up to protect one another to ensure that tomorrow we could go on living our lives as we did yesterday. This is the magic of Manhattan that so many talk about but can never quite put their finger on. The reality of these silly articles, I've begun to realize, is that they actually have a sense of truth to them. It is my personal opinion that everyone has terrorism on their number one list of fears, especially when it starts to hit so close to home. The difference for New Yorkers, a difference that the tweets of lists of fears use satire to put their finger on, is that we keep on living. When things like this happen, we may stay in the night of, but the next morning, we go outside. We go for quick jogs and grocery runs and brunch. We hug friends we see on the street and avoid catcalls from desperate men on park benches. We fear these things without allowing them to interfere with how we live. And that, I think, is something for the terrorists to be afraid of. They use their violence and ignorance in the hopes of scaring us to stop our lives and stay inside.
Unfortunately for them, we will be going out.
--mk.
No comments:
Post a Comment