The Distance Between Safety and Danger Is Measured In Moments

Autumn is a magical time of year here on Kingston Bay. The colors are glorious, the light is extraordinary, and the bird population puts on a show worthy of narration by Sir David Attenborough.

Every morning, sitting in my bay window, I feel like an air traffic controller overseeing one of the busiest airports in the world.

Geese are heading in one direction, ducks in another. Swans glide across the water with an almost ethereal grace, while seagulls (who knew there were so many varieties?) squabble over seemingly nothing. Cormorants dive beneath the surface, only to pop up somewhere entirely unexpected.

And when the bait fish are running, all hell breaks loose!

The bay literally roils with activity. Birds swoop, dive, splash and compete for breakfast. It's a veritable feeding frenzy, and I have a front-row seat.

For this transplanted New Yorker, the spectacle never gets old. And then comes the gunfire. Sharp, staccato bursts that interrupt the morning's performance.

Duck hunting season.

I know what the sounds mean. I know where they're coming from. And I know I'm perfectly safe. But they fill me with profound sadness.

Perhaps it's because I've spent the past 8 years watching these creatures simply go about the business of being alive. Feeding, flying, migrating, surviving. Each with its own rhythms, its own place in this extraordinary natural world.

I've grown attached to them. Not individually, of course, but to their presence, to the reassuring familiarity of their comings and goings. They've become part of the landscape of my life.

And then I hear those shots and realize that somewhere out there, one of them may have just disappeared. One moment, part of this glorious choreography of nature. The next, gone.

And almost involuntarily, my thoughts travel far beyond Kingston Bay. To people living in war-torn parts of the world, where gunfire isn't a seasonal interruption but a daily reality.

But I don't have to look that far.

I think about children sitting in classrooms, people shopping for groceries, families attending religious services, friends enjoying a concert. Ordinary people doing ordinary things, never imagining that the next moment could change everything.

Just like the birds outside my window.

I'm not suggesting that duck hunting, war and mass shootings are the same thing. They're not.

But there's something about the sound of gunfire, the sudden intrusion into the ordinary business of living, that connects them in my mind.

The vulnerability. The randomness. The terrible realization that life can be interrupted without warning. And perhaps what unsettles me most is the recognition that the distance between safety and danger isn't always measured in miles.

It can be measured in moments.

I've written before about fearmongering, about the danger of allowing fear to shape how we see the world and how we live our lives. But sitting here at my window, I realize there's an important distinction between being frightened by the world and being saddened by what happens in it.

I'm not sitting here afraid that something terrible is going to happen to me. I'm saddened that terrible things happen at all. And I wonder whether, in a world where we're exposed to so much suffering, we've become almost too good at protecting ourselves from feeling it.

Another shooting. Another war. Another tragedy. We shake our heads, perhaps say how awful it is, and move on. Not necessarily because we don't care, but because there's only so much sadness we can absorb.I understand that. We all have lives to live.

But I worry about what happens when protecting ourselves from sadness becomes indifference. Because there's something else I've come to realize.

The same part of me that feels such profound sadness when I hear those shots is the part that feels such extraordinary joy watching the swans glide across the water.

It's the same capacity to be moved. To care. To recognize something precious in the life unfolding around us.

Perhaps that's what we need to protect. Not ourselves from every uncomfortable feeling, but our ability to feel at all.

Eventually, the gunfire stops.The bay settles back into its familiar rhythms. The geese continue their journey, the gulls resume their squabbling, and the swans glide across the water with that same effortless grace.

And I'll be back at my window tomorrow, watching the show. Not because I've forgotten the gunfire. But because I haven't forgotten how beautiful life can be.

And I hope the birds will be there, too.