Flowers for Boston

Almost two years ago when I heard a bomb go off in Oslo, I immediately thought of the construction work down the road. It didn't cross my mind that this loud bang in my safe and tranquil hometown could be a massive bomb that had just killed and injured a lot of innocent people.

I can imagine a lot of people in Boston did the same, probably thought they heard fireworks or something. The thought of a bomb at this annual, traditional family event in this safe, traditional city, seems so far away, so surreal. But sadly, we have to come to terms with that the surreal - is real.

The terror strikes ordinary people at moments when their minds couldn't be further away from fear and insecurity. Ordinary people - you and me. And among us, some people walk around with ideas of spreading fear and creating chaos among their peers. How and why these ideas occur is necessary to try to understand. The reason behind the specific attack however, deserves no attention.

No cause in this world can defend killing children. The action is cynical, ruthless and disgustingly cowardly. And tragically, it seems to be catching on among insane extremists.

One of the goals the terrorist that struck Oslo had was to promote what he called his "Manifest" - a paper describing his ideology and how killing 76 teenagers was "a necessary mean in his war against islam." Unfortunately, his paper got attention.

But he failed badly on several other goals. He failed to nurture fear and hostility between groups of people. He failed to turn people against the ruling government. He failed to spread hatred. He failed to destroy the political recruitment.

When a group of people is attacked, people unite, help each other, stick together. The group of ordinary people is pretty big.

The shock and the sorrow bring out the strength, the courage and the goodness in people. Instead of crawling into hiding, the masses strike back with an overwhelming demonstration of compassion, cohesion and love. It makes me proud of being human in the middle of the puzzling inhumane event.

The rhetoric from the White House has a different tune than before. There is no "us and them" or "war on terror" anymore. Justice, yes - the individuals responsible will be brought to justice. The arena of the war seems to have shifted from the ground to the mind.

Two years ago, back in Oslo, I walked downtown to leave roses by the area where the bomb hit. A journalist asked me why I wanted to leave flowers and I replied "because they are such strong symbol of compassion and peace. I really hope we'll see a lot of flowers here"

A week after the bombing, the sea of flowers was so big that a few blocks had to be closed off for traffic. It was closed for months.

When words come too short, flowers can pass on a powerful message. Flowers represent solidarity, compassion, cohesion, peace. Love. Let the purpose and cause behind this horrible act drown in a sea of flowers.

Ordinary people are not soldiers. But ordinary people can fight the enemy by refusing to back down to the fear. The war is in our mind. Protect your values by sticking to them. Keep living, keep running. In the honor of the fallen.

Honk that horn, you bastard

Our Captain in Montreal once told me "You have to know something, Marianne, there are plenty of ASSHOLES on the roads around here."

People behind the wheels forget themselves from time to time. Actually quite often. They get sucked into the mission of getting from one place to another, operating the vehicle and maneuvering between thousands of other cars on the same mission - just different destinations.

After a few years of practice, the technical part of driving becomes automatic and one drift into driving-mode, a sort of hypnotic concentration, slightly distant to the surroundings but with continuous focus on the road. Or so one should hope.

In this condition, the self guards for a lot of people tend to be off duty.

I would never, ever even dream of yelling " move your ass, fuckhead!!" to a stranger who happen to cut me off at the lineup for the counter at the supermarket. No matter how cheeky or deliberate he is. In fact, I would never say those words to a strangers face, period. Not even when I'm drunk.

But I have to admit I'm one of those who loose my self guard when driving. Behind the wheel, I'm responsible for driving safely, not responsible for practicing good manners. Observed from a distance I probably balance on the borderline of Tourettes syndrome. But hey, I'm not the only one.

The thing is, when you happen to be in stable driving-mode, which is really where you should be when driving 70 miles per hour on a highway, you get startled when you realize that some people are not. People talk on the phone, read sms, eat, smoke, smoke and talk on the phone at the same time - and thereby cause dangerous situations or fail to let you in when you're entering the 95.

Thats when you feel the blood boiling for a moment and words you didn't think you had in your vocabulary get aired out. Nobody out there can hear what you're really saying. But then cars are fitted with horns, and honking is international, it translates all swearwords in all languages into one generic anger tone. As far as I'm told, it is there for safety purpose, but for a lot of drivers it serves as a great impulsive anger outlet button.

Recently I had someone honking at me for about 10 seconds. Imagine what he wanted to put across ... Don't remember what I did, probably failed to go on a green light or something because I turned around to talk to my son in the back seat. That's ok, I understand. I probably could have done the same.

Not that I didn't raise a fist at him. Can't remember wether a finger was up or not, but it's not important. The impulsive road anger disappears just as fast as it appears, with no regrets.

The reason why you react in the first place is because you are very alert. A lot of accidents happen, but a lot of accidents are avoided too thanks to horrendous impulsive reaction behavior.

The Captain is right. There are a lot of assholes on the roads. And we're all just people in cars.