Last week, two of my Syracuse University abroad peers went to a gym in central London. While watching the national news channel that had no sound, images of a London tube train protruding into a busy street surrounded by debris and chaos popped up on the screen. The headlines at the bottom of the screen displayed information that the tube had been bombed and named the location as a station that my peers and their friends frequented.

The students scrambled to their phones to text their flatmates to see if they were all right and to call family in the United States to inform them that they were OK. They were levelheaded and expectant, even, of such an event.

Their panic may have been partially sparked by the warning London students received on Oct. 3 that the U.S. Department of State issued a heightened travel alert for Americans traveling and living in Europe.

Moments later, the students realized the horrific news casts were merely replays of old footage from a terrorist attack in London that took place years ago. Outside the walls of the gym, the city remained unchanged and calm, with business as usual.

The combination of the travel alert abroad and Syracuse University’s annual Remembrance Week at home can serve as a reminder that life is for living.

Since the warning has been put into effect, this beautiful city has grown a grotesque face to those outside of it. A city imagined with barren streets and people hurrying past landmarks and denying public transportation. A city in which I receive phone calls from friends and family telling me to lay low, that ‘the worst’ is something to be feared, something to hinge my life upon.

To those in this city, Americans and Europeans alike, the warning has barely warranted mental recognition. The tube is just as obnoxiously packed during rush hour — Buckingham Palace has seen no relief of people making idiots of themselves to get the guards to crack a grin. Business as usual.

The general feeling here seems to be that there’s no changing the inevitable, so it’s pointless to do anything but live life as usual. Life is for living, a notion that has usurped the threat of terror in the minds of many abroad students who have refused to cancel flights to popular destinations throughout Europe and Asia and have never considered walking to class in lieu of taking the tube.

With this week marking Syracuse’s annual Remembrance Week, the gravity of terror abroad has been sharpened, but remains diluted. The air of somber remembrance has mingled with the invisible grime left by the travel alert.

Although I wasn’t even alive when the Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, the memories of those events and of the 35 Syracuse students who perished in the attack serve as constant reminders as to why life should be for living. Its brevity or length is immeasurable and should thereby be taken at face value.

This is the world our generation will inherit: one speckled with stories of lives lost in events like Pan Am Flight 103 or the World Trade Towers. An elevated and monstrous version of the Cold War is ours to endure, to mold into something beautiful and impregnable, to experience without intimidation or reluctance.

Whether living in London with heightened security warnings or attending a candle light vigil in Syracuse for souls lost, the elephant in the room must not be allowed to write the fate of our generation. Life is for living.

Jessica Smith is a junior information studies and technology and television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly, and she can be reached at jlsmit22@syr.edu.

 

Published on October 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm