Terrorism is about terror.

I was going to write a nice little write-up about the Chelsea Flower Show (100th anniversary!) that I went to on Wednesday, but I got home to the startling news that two men had murdered a British solider with a machete in the streets of Woolrich as a political act.

Having come from the country, I am unaccustomed to confronting random violence like this.  When I saw the images of blood streaked across pavement, saw the video of the killer's bloody hands casually holding his soaked butcher's knife, my heart was seized with adrenaline pulsing fright. It suddenly made sense that we call it terrorism. It is actually terrifying.

I'm struggling to process the events and to feel safe in its aftermath. Woolrich is actually not in London proper, so I would not say that my fear is particularly rational, but it is closer to me than an act like this has ever been before now. It was a visceral act to begin with, but that it is actually in the place that I live has made it all the more real.

I've been reaching out to my fellow city-dwellers, both here and in New York City, for their thoughts on living in places where things like this happen and how to get over the terror it releases. Almost all of them have said the same thing: it probably won't happen to you, so you just don't think about it. Worrying about it isn't going to help you feel or actually be safer. There's no benefit to being scared.

I do see how this thinking is more helpful than being scared. And I do see how it allows us to keep living in and enjoying the wonderful cities where we choose to live, but I am still unsettled. A 1/8,000,000 chance that you may die by a machete attack is still more than 0/2000 which is what my odds were living in a tiny, bucolic town in the Hudson Valley. Of course 1/8,000,000 comfortably rounds to 0. We have to go back 7 decimal places to find our first non-zero number. This number is so tiny, it cannot be statistically significant. For all purposes it is 0. And yet, in this case, .000000125 does not feel like 0.

I can't help but wonder if by ignoring the fear we are missing out on something important, for example, why did this happen? What caused these two men to be so angry and fed up that they felt they needed to murder someone to be heard? A lot of the rhetoric coming out of the news is that the crime is heinous and the assailants are insane. I suppose if we do not "let terrorism win" this is the only response - to ignore what they are trying to say, trying to get us to think about. But is this the most affective way to prevent it from happening again?

Do they have a point? Did they write a treatise? It was clearly an act for political attention. He made a speech after the killing. They waited for the police. He said we should not be in his country, killing his people. He was sorry women had to see the killing, but women in his country see this every day.

War is atrocious and it's embarrassing our collective world culture has not moved passed it. I wish the media would take incidents like these as opportunities to urge for constructive peace. If we weren't all stealing resources, power, land, money from one another, perhaps we would engender less hatred between us? This could be such a powerful moment for self-reflection on the way that the western world lives and how that life is fueled. Is it fair? Is it sustainable? Do we want to keep living this way? I find it really frustrating the media's response is to blindly and stoically condemn.  Most of the personal reactions I have seen are terror-driven complacency. How do we express our fears and anger within our culture? There must be a better way to digest and move on from events like this. Can the media not play a role in expressing our concerns while also making way for constructive dialogue and not fear mongering or painting a black and white moral portrait?

I don't know what the answer is. I certainly don't want terrorists to think that murdering people in the countries that they think are oppressing them is a way to get heard or get their concerns into the national dialogue. But there must be a better way for us digest what's happened than ignoring it or allowing ourselves to be terrified and brainwashed to hate The Other by the media.

Having said all that, I am so so sorry for the victim's family and community. I cannot imagine the amount of grief and anger they are feeling. It's unfair.