“Look at me. I just can’t believe what they’ve done to me.” – Major Lazer, Get Free

I’ve always thought of the phrase “anything can happen” as one of great optimism. Full of possibility and luck and well-aligned with my own personal desire to be ready to take advantage of great opportunities when they come along.

Yesterday, as I spent most of the day listening to KCRW for the most reasonable and thoughtful and not-maddening news I could find about the events in Boston, I listened to this story on PRI’s The World. A mother, Alysia Albott was on lockdown with her children and said the words “anything can happen” with such dread and concern that I had to stop and really process it.

In a world where, even for a week, the idea that a bomb could go off anywhere, that just opening your door is a risky proposition, that “anything can happen” can be the scariest phrase imaginable.

I still live in a safe space where positive possibility is seemingly around every corner but I also live in a world where the bizzaro version of that is true and normal.  And not just this week in Boston but in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere.

That’s going to stay with me. I pray I don’t forget that both exist. And that I dedicate more of my life to trying to curb the dreadful realities.

It seems impossible but you never know.

Anything can happen.