Imagine your life as it has been for years, moving along like everything is just fine, wandering through your little world in a haze of several hundred tomorrows, all filled with the smiles and faces you know and love. The flowers are there and, sometimes, you stop to admire them.

Imagine all of the things you want of yourself – the things you want to do and see, the places you want to go, the things you haven’t had the courage to say… yet… and the things you aspire toward. The list is huge, and some things are crossed off, but other things have been pushed into the margins somewhere, waiting for the “right time” or the “perfect place” or some motivation or ambition or sequence of events or something.

Imagine that , suddenly, you discover that your world has been infiltrated and is being quickly taken over. When you look through the window you can see the onslaught with utter clarity – the towers and rooftops are burning, glass is shattering all around, the structural supports are crumbling away and all the little civilians down below are being beaten, raped and brutally murdered. You want to help them, fix it and make the aggressors disappear – but there is nothing you can do.

There is nothing any of us can do…

except cry.