Thoughts about the Paris attacks and life in general in The View from the Terrace

I have given up on NojoMo. I was struggling to keep up and I couldn’t seem to respond to some of the subjects. This last week I have been feeling very stuck. I think the events in Paris have a lot to do with it. The night it happened we were at a concert and I came home, as I often do after those events, full of optimism and hope and I got home to that news. For some reason this time has changed the way I feel about things. I have always been very much against war. I have always felt that we should try to understand why people do these things and consider talking to them. I read somewhere that we end up talking in the end so perhaps we should talk in the beginning.

I am old enough to remember when the IRA were leaving bombs everywhere and killing innocent people. I lived in London from January 1975 till Novemebr 1976 and it was a very nervous time. I actually heard a bomb go off once. I had been going to go out for a walk but decided to get on with something else instead when I heard the bomb. I was living in a hostel around the corner from Victoria Station and I remember thinking there may be people hurt out there and trying to decide if I should go out and help or stay safe when I heard the sirens of the police cars. People were against all Irish then. I once wore a shamrock brooch on St Patrick’s Day and one of my work mates said, ‘You’re not Irish are you?’ I told her my ancester was. Eventually, twenty years later, we talked to the IRA. Would it not have been better to have done that at the beginning, I don’t know.

Anyway, I have always felt that maybe we should talk. Even after 9/11 and the London bombings I didn’t believe in retaliation. Since Paris I have felt a kind of hopelessness. These radicalised people are beyond talking to, I can see that. I don’t think they are evil, but they are filled with hatred, it is too late. So what do we do? If we retaliate and bomb Syria, they will retaliate and so on. I don’t know, as I said I feel stuck and hopeless.

I do think about how people become like that. I have read that some of the bombers in the past were loners as children, outcasts, some were bullied, I am not trying to excuse it, just explain it. I do know I went through a period in my life when I was an outcast. My parents moved to the other end of the country and I was not accepted. I had already missed some school because of other health problems, then we moved and the local grammer school refused to take me because of my time off, the only suitable private school was full and I ended up eventually leaving a month or two before the official leaving age. It was agreed with the education authorities and I was working on my education at home but all of the local children refused to mix with me. Then my father became ill with cancer and died 9 months later and no one even spoke then or asked how I was. This went on for years. It was awful. If there had been such a movement in those days I think I could have converted and even become radicalised, I hope not, but I hated those people, I would have joined anything just to belong.

What I think I am trying to say is maybe if we were all more tolerant and less judgemental and accepting of difference people wouldn’t feel the need to take these extreme paths. I don’t think religion causes it I think religion can be a refuge but it could just as easily be a political alliance. When I was young a lot of rebels joined the communist party.

So instead of allocating blame, instead of talking about evil monsters, let us look within ourselves and root out our predujice and hatred, let us accept diffence. Perhaps all you do need is love.