Anti-climax

Right before I started college, September 11 happened. Right before I started my first post-college job, Katrina. History is repeating itself on a national and personal level. It's very odd, grounding, yes, but in a depressing way, to be reminded of the silliness of one's own concerns--What will I wear on the first day? Who will be in my dorm or office?--when faced with incomprehensible, gruesome tragedy. Starting school after 9/11 seemed much stranger, most likely because I was in Manhattan at the time but left a couple days later, and because it's more culturally expected to make a fuss about starting college than about starting a job.

I feel no major guilt for being happy and excited to start school or work despite the times at which these events have fallen. Life should go on. I do, however, catch myself whenever I start to complain about these changes, to dread the commute or to think how awful it is that Orientation Week includes a swim test. Catch myself, but continue to complain--life goes on, and no hurricane or terrorism victims are helped by internal stoicism. Also, I feel--reasonably, I think--incapable of thinking of either event as, objectively speaking, a big deal. It's expected that people temporarily, or at least momentarily, consider their own situation the most important in the world whenever they reach some life-change or another. Not under these circumstances.