Skip to main content

Fear

As I sit in the tube, someone sings next to me in what sounds like arabic. It could not be, but looks like it. Echoing chants in a compenetrated fashion. You can see the surprise in some people's faces when they see someone humming on the train. But as they hear the type of humming, there is a slight cloud of fear that is hard to control. As I look around me I can't help but think many are thinking what he will do next. Reading the lyrics from his phone,that only I can see, as I sit next to him, this image is hard to ignore. The white big male in front of me is markedly checking for movements. I try to focus on my game and leave him in peace. Deep inside, I can't ignore it.
And it is so unfair we feel like this. I focus on T and all the amazing arabs I know. How this could be a love song that he likes or his practicing or enjoys. How this could be his most efficient way to do his morning prayers. How this could not even be arabic for all I know. But what about all the people around me that have never seen anything other than the wars? How can they deal with the fear of his next move.
The status of the world has brought us this. Not some movie scene, but real life scenes where everyone seems to find religion as a good excuse for killings. It is very discomforting.
And by the way, he was just another guy in the tube. He stood up and left in Canada Water. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Self

The last classes in Leadership try hard to make you think and figure out what to do about yourself. So we talked about our best self, not just about what it is but more of when it happens. We had to ask a couple of former colleagues, friends and family to give us three examples of when we were at our best. The point is not to skyrocket your ego, don’t worry. It is about understanding what are the environments that make your strengths come out. Because if you know what they are, then you will look to pursue a future that exhibits these characteristics. A “what brings the good in you” kind of thing. It was interesting to get that feedback. More than interesting, it was insightful. It was amazingly consistent throughout and it was curious to see the examples that people remember about you. I do recommend to anyone in need to find a bit more of where they should go. The thing about the examples is that they do have something in common, whether they came from people I worked with recently o...
1 comment
Read more

Flying Sunday

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard...
2 comments
Read more

Is this morning on a Saturday?

I have to admit, it has been a long long time since I was awake on a Saturday morning on my own free will (last week, with Patricia waking me up at 8am jet lagged does not really count, it was really not my own free will). And in a way it feels good. I mean, the sun is beautiful. The biggest reason for it to feel good is probably because I have not set my feet out of the door yet: I am claiming that I will study this weekend, and for that I have been out of bed for a couple of hours though it is still barely lunch time here. Well, I am reading about this Mountain Dew drink that is apparently super famous and I never heard about before, I read last night about the Iridium failure by Motorola and some finance case that I will have to negotiate on Monday. Things are fun fun overall but it is not exactly my cup of tea for a Saturday morning. Soon I will start doing my recruiting activities; going through immense websites and try to figure out what is it that will make me get out of be...
2 comments
Read more