Just keep swimming

Terrorist threats have never really affected my life.

I’m one of the lucky ones.

Like most IU undergrads, I’ve been very aware of terrorism for half my life — since Sept. 11, 2001. But even after that day, with all of the highly publicized terrorist attacks and attempts around the world, I’ve still felt pretty secure.

Indiana isn’t exactly high on most international terrorists’ hit lists — Chicago is probably the closest city big enough to be worth hitting.

My parents’ assurances that nothing was going to happen here got my 11-year-old self through the weeks and month after the towers were hit, and I gradually got used to it, in a distant, not-really-involved sort of way.

Even terrorist attacks in countries I visited didn’t phase me. The London Tube bombings took place nine months before I visited, and it was far enough in the past that I didn’t worry about it. I never saw or heard anything during the Paris riots that spring. When I went to Israel last winter, we were in a tour group and isolated from the news. And, as it so happens, the big terrorism news that week was the people who stopped an attacker on a plane headed to the States.

It wasn’t until I was on my own in a large, strange city that I started to realize that it affects me, too.

The U.S. and Britain have both issued travel warnings. I got e-mails from IU, the university sponsoring my program and my parents to be careful and alert someone if I see anything suspicious.

I was frightened in a way I wasn’t even when I was in the Middle East. For the first time in my life, I’m really, truly on my own. I’m in a city about eight times the size of my hometown. And the country I’m in and the country I come from are both raising the terrorist threat levels.

Having to be wary of that is a strange — and kind of alarming — experience.

We’re told we could be attacked and then expected to go on with our lives. In fact, a Tube strike last week got Londoners’ attention more. No non-Americans I know even mentioned the increased threat levels.

It made me realize that everyone here still functions normally because they have no choice. They can’t stop someone from planning to set bombs off. They can’t protect the city. And they can’t let fear rule their lives. If everyone cowers in fear behind closed doors, the terrorists win. The world can’t stop spinning because of something that may or may not happen.

That doesn’t make me any less afraid. I should be afraid—something terrible could happen to me or someone I care about. But I can’t stop living my life because of it. I can’t stay off the Tube. It’s too far to walk to class or work. I can’t not travel around the country and around the continent.

I can be wary. I can watch for abandoned bags on the tube. I can look around me when I walk instead of bouncing to my iPod and staring at my feet (because better I trip over uneven ground than I miss something important). I can be careful.

And I can continue to live my life.

Having the right attitude might or might not be half the battle, but I think it helps (particularly when I’m in a peppy mood or on caffeine. I don’t so much think this when my alarm goes off at 7:15 in the morning). Be careful, but, as Dory says, “Just keep swimming.”

When we got to London, we asked one of the program staff members how often it rains, because it’s one of the two things the country is most famous for (the other being tea). He told us to prepare for rain every day. If it did rain, we wouldn’t get too wet. If it didn’t, we’d have a nice surprise.

That applies to the rest of life, here and elsewhere. Be prepared in case it happens. Watch what’s around me, have important contact numbers and make sure my cell phone is always charged and on me — and be happy when it doesn’t.

In other words, just keep swimming and hope I don’t get too wet.


E-mail: hanns@indiana.edu