Perspective: What I know To

be emotionally drained right now, to say the least, binds all Americans

together like mice in maze. As we bounce from shock to hurt to fear to

anger, none of us can feel fully confident about the same things we knew

just a week ago.

I am reminded of a lyric from

Billy Corgan that says, "Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat

in a cage." To me, this sums up a lot of feelings among the population

right now. If there is one thing we Americans have always had, it is the

ability to control everything around us. Not so, the case now. I think

we all feel like the senior citizen who has had his Viagra stolen away.

There is a shadow of doubt

cast over so much of what we always have depended. I am reminded of the

missionary I once heard, telling of his life of strife, but finishing

every phrase with hope and the Bible verse from II Timothy, chapter 1,

"For I know whom I have believed." Some things never change;

they only become clearer in the fog.

To those who have lost loved

ones, we can pour out our hearts. For those who have lost wives and husbands,

sons and daughters, we can pray and we can pray hard.

Not since the Civil War have

we been the battlefield on which our own have been killed. I feel impotent,

in that I can offer nothing new, no new thoughts or words or ideas how

to rise from the ashes of this catastrophe.

In some ways that is just how

we can offer our respect, though. To just stop talking, to look inward,

to face the silence head on. Mark Twain said, "Courage is resistance

to fear, mastery of fear not absence of fear." There has been too

much fear to go around in the last seven days, roughly the same amount

of time it takes Russell Crowe to break up a Hollywood marriage.

There is little that shocks

us anymore, yet we have been shocked. With cable piped into our homes

24/7 and every other e-mail carrying a link to every kind of wild Internet

site, it is difficult even to get us to sit up and notice anything, anymore.

The visual impact of Tuesday's events will stay with us for a long, long

time, though.

Even with the buffer of an

e-mail from a friend that told me to, "Turn on your TV, a plane has

crashed into the World Trade Center," I felt affected. I felt sickened

when five minutes later, I got another e-mail that said, "I am sitting

here watching TV and I just saw a second plan crash into the World Trade

Center while I was watching!"

the horrible effects of seeing these events live. As each unfolding event

sunk in, I felt like I was being covered with some sort of molten lava

flowing slowly over my feelings.

Our feelings are what we need

to embrace right now. None of us likes to be forced to encounter who we

are, deep down. This is why we lose ourselves in distractions. This is

why institutions like Nintendo, Nascar, and shopping exist. It's gonna

take a heck of a cocktail, real or otherwise, to make us forget the sadness

of Sept. 11, 2001.

None of us want to believe

this is real. We want to hit rewind on our VCRs, click back our CD just

a few tracks. There have always been second chances in this world we have

so carefully crafted for ourselves. Not this time.

So how do we deal with our

anger? What is our anger even really about? I have no idea, personally.

I don't even know when I will feel like my brain is hitting on all cylinders

again. My protons are firing. It's just my neurons that have caught Amtrak

to some hidden cave on some lost island, in some ocean that's never been

discovered.

As big as our country is, we

have fallen pretty hard. But we are no Goliath. We will get back up. As

the sun sets, we will stand again; and cast a larger shadow of power than

anyone recalls that we ever had. Personally, though, will this retribution

give us the peace we so long to have?

I am glad mine is not dependant

on any of the activities that reside in either of the two earthly hemispheres:

"For I know whom I have believed."

[Visit Billy Murphy on the

Internet at www.ebilly.net.]