Life is fragile. Life is precious.

I`ll be heading back to work tommorrow.

In many ways, the world is an awful place. In many ways, the world is a wonderful place.

The violence and mayhem unleashed by one man, tearing a scar through the place where I work, was countered by other forces.

I`m not one who's often given to praising the police, and my experience of the police in this case was scary. Still, I have to say that at Dawson rapid police intervention saved many lives, and many officers put their own lives at risk to save the lives of others.

Then there are those who`ve been busy trying to repair and heal the damage, and soothe the suffering. The work of medical staff has so far limited the death toll to one, which seems almost a miracle.

There`s also the work of healing the psychological damage. There are professional counsellors who`ve been working on this and who`ll continue to do so. But then there`s also been people helping each other and being helped by friends and family.

I was lucky. I walked into Dawson at about twenty to one, but by the Sherbrooke entrance. I didn`t witness the violence first hand. There was only the threat of violence, the knowledge that violence had been done, and the fear (fed by media reports) that the violence was still happening. There was seeing the cafeteria floor smeared with blood. All of this was traumatic, and I`ve been feeling the effects since. I can only imagine what other people who were more directly affected are going through, or what would have happened had I gone through the de Maisonneuve enterence at twenty to one. But I`ve been blessed by friends and family reaching out to me, telling me that they are thinking of me. They remind me of what is good about this world and in people.

There are lessons that we must learn from this. We may need to make changes in the ways we live together as a community. But we must remember where our stregnths are already. That way, we can build on them.