Am I the only person that really hates randomly seeing an event depicted where I know people are suffering and dying in the image? Maybe it is my decade and counting of suffering from physical disability that makes me particularly empathetic to human suffering. Maybe it was because I was sitting in geometry class when the announcement came in, class stopped, and we all turned on the TV two minutes before the second plane struck. I watched this in real time, and all the events as they unfolded. There will never be a day when I forget seeing that happen. The jumpers that followed bothered me most at the time.
Knowing myself, and how much I care about strangers, if I had been there, I would have died while trying to help people. I often imagine what it might have been like as the collapse happened, or the experience within the plane. I have a vivid imagination for such abstractions; the heat, the sounds; the way materials fail and collapse, the view out of the window, the spectrum of how others react, how I quietly endure whatever I must in the moment – often more aware of the events unfolding around me – only to experience others when they suddenly realize what is happening moments later.
That is what I see in this image. I don’t like seeing it on Lemmy in any unnecessary context. I don’t see the politics. I see the people inside. I see you the person reading this right now, wherever you are. You, in a moment of innocent vulnerability, going about your day, half tuned out of the real world that surrounds you, and I care about you, as both a fellow human in real life space around you and as a digital neighbor here. To me, it is like we are both in that building, on one of the floors struck and burning, and I am doing everything I can to help you escape; refusing to leave until you are freed. I don’t know you or your name. If the shoe is on the other foot, I can easily write off myself as a loss; insisting that I am fine and that you need to escape while leaving me behind. That hypothetical does not bother me at all. It is only the idea of you, the real you, seriously, the you looking at this screen right now, that bothers me to think it is you stuck in there. I did not leave you. We didn’t die alone you and I. Call me crazy, but I care, and I can’t help it. It is who I am.
deleted by creator
Osama bin Levi’s
