REALITY?: Changing Views

In the middle of the local news last night, I felt a change of sorts.  Belief, or my perspective of the world suddenly became doubt and I listened closely as the news anchor, after reporting on the two parolees responsible for the murder of a man’s wife and daughters in their own home, said something to the effect of "how you can protect yourself from home invasion."

I’ve heard this or something similar a hundred times before and yet in an instant, it became something different that I was hearing.  First, it hit me that the anchorman was warning the "good" people against danger from the "bad" people; that there indeed were people out there that would break into homes and rob and murder.  I know this, and yet for the first time it sounded odd, as if this were a futureworld and the rare crime became the norm, that it was up to good citizens to protect themselves against an evil force. 

For a flash of time I had an image of someone wanting to break into our own home.  Why would they?  This is something that I couldn’t answer as the immediacy of the moment melted back into the comfort of our living room, me on the couch, laptop working, snores from the bedroom, all the familiar things melting into a sense of stability unquestioned.  Yet something had changed for all time.