Date with destiny?

If you haven’t heard of the Times Square bomb scare by now, you should probably crawl out from under whatever rock you’ve found. That aside, the details are strewn about the news, journalists and Homeland Security are saying this is the most serious bombing attempt since the Christmas Day attempt on the airplane heading to Detroit. And the residents, tourists, and I are breathing a big sigh of relief that, by some twist of fate, this bomb did not detonate.

I was actually leaving Times Square Saturday evening at about 7pm when the overwhelmingly busy square block of New York City was flooded with emergency response vehicles while the many tourists that were enjoying the sights were evacuating. To be honest, I did not think much of the scene and didn’t even know anything serious was taking place until the next morning when a friend informed me that we cheated death. (Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not quite!)

When retrospectively faced with my mortality, I thought about what it means to be, unknowingly, at the mercy of somebody else, when your life is in their hands and you don’t even realize it. Daily we put our faith in the goodness of our brothers and sisters that we will make it through the day. We trust that others seek to do good and avoid harm, or that they’ll at least resist their urge to harm.

I am humbled (time and again) by what little control I actually have over my own life and what amount of power others may have over mine. I am grateful that my Pakistani brother did not properly construct the bomb, that the souvenir salesman immediately notified the authorities when he saw smoke coming from the car, and that the emergency response personnel acted in a swift manner to eliminate any potential harm. And again, we put our lives in the hands of others whom we may never meet.

Our lives are all intimately connected, whether we realize it or not. We have the power to make big changes in the lives of people with whom we will never be face-to-face. Our actions affect those around us and people we don’t even know. Think about it.