Experiences like 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, the Gulf War, the Challenger and Columbia disasters, Katrina and Mt. St. Helens - all make us aware of our fragile mortality; make us acutely aware of those we love; illuminate our pettinesses. As soon as we feel it happen, many of us raise our defenses to prevent such things from getting to us and interfering with "how things are" or how we are used to behaving. Our defenses go up, some sooner, some later, but one by one as the intensity of the shared emotional experience becomes too much, the jokes begin, the changes of subject, the efforts to get away from the intensity by ducking under cover of "life as usual". No thanks, God. I don't want to think about that right now. It's too much.

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