Bourbon Street
An ominous start to 2025: a car drives into crowded Bourbon Street in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans. Ten killed, more than thirty injured, and the driver jumped out to exchange gun fire with police (two officers hit). Maybe there’s bombs as well, maybe not. Maybe the driver/shooter is dead by his own hand, or by the police, maybe not. But the FBI says he’s dead, and it’s only 8 am.
Bourbon Street – an iconic location in American “lore”. Walking with the crowd on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve, or better yet, Mardi Gras, is on the lifetime “bucket list” for many. I’ve been there a couple of times, but only with high school teams along. Bourbon Street is about music, and parties, and “show me your — beads”. Walking there in the daytime doesn’t really give the true “feel”. As one of my athletes found out when he stepped in the door of a “nude dancers” club at one in the afternoon; “When it’s family night we’ll let you know!!!”
Bourbon Street never really has a family night. But, like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, or Key West, or on the Vegas Strip; it’s where Americans go to party the New Year in. Now, they’re blowing up suspected “bombs” on the streets. Maybe they’re really bombs, maybe they’re packages left behind in the panic of the moment. Better safe than sorry.
Lone Wolf
It’s a reminder that we live in a dangerous world. What we used to worry about was planned terrorist attacks by Black September or Al Qaeda or Isis. That’s changed. It’s not organized anymore. It’s a crazed “lone wolf”, who may be radicalized on the internet, or may just be nuts, or both. We’ve all got cars, a weapon of choice. And, since it’s the United States of America, many of us, including those who have lost their minds, have guns as well.
So what should be the “mindset” for 2025? Should we go back to the weeks after 9/11, when Americans avoided malls, stadiums, crowds and celebrations? They were all “soft targets”. And it took a while before we went back to those events, and stopped looking up at each jet in the sky as a weapon.
There is a theory of avoidance: stay “small”. Don’t put yourself in a position when you could be at risk. Stay away from all of the events, national ones like New Year’s Eve on Bourbon Street, or local ones like the village festival. But this violence can happen anywhere. It happened at a local school, a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. Or at a place of worship, like the one in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Or at local grocery stores, like the Tops Friendly in Buffalo, New York, or the King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado. How “small” are you willing to be?
Kismet
There is an Islamic word, Kismet. It is a word for fate, for the pure random chance that put those folks in the path of a vehicle in the wee hours of New Year’s Day on Bourbon Street. We can take precautions: Times Square is ringed with barriers and trash trucks to prevent exactly such an attack. They don’t even allow port-a-potties, a place where a bomb could be assembled and detonated. (The great mystery of New Year’s Eve on Times Square – where do those people go to go?).
Surely Bourbon Street will be closed to vehicle traffic next year, concrete barriers and, maybe New Orleans trash trucks as well. But in the end, you can choose to live life, or you can choose to live “small”, avoiding the unavoidable, try to hide from Kismet. But, no matter what your religious beliefs (or lack thereof), in the end there’s no avoiding that.
Resolution
So here’s a New Year’s Resolution: Live Life. 2025 is a new year, one that you will never experience again. Don’t let fear stop you from experiencing everything that 2025 has to offer. You don’t have to be reckless, but you don’t have to be “small” either. Living is more than existing, it’s experiencing the world. There’s an Chinese expression; “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.”
As one with some experience with dogs, I can tell you that even in our times of chaos, they can be tranquil. And in tranquil times, they can create chaos. We can’t control our world and our current times (the election of 2024 certainly proves that), but we can still strive to make it better, even with danger of other’s lunacy. Kismet will find us when it does. In the meantime, we can live, and experience, and find joy wherever we can. So live a Happy New Year!!!!
