Today's icasualties.org number of Americans killed in Iraq had a strange familiarity. Mulling this, it hit me with a sudden shock that this number -
1788 - corresponds precisely to the number of people I've been able to document knowing during the course of my
entire lifetime.
So here's a thought experiment for the heart: imagine the world absent of absolutely every friend, family member and acquaintance you've ever known. I might be a neighbor to one person, a co-worker to another, maybe a teacher, a parent or simply a peculiar curiosity. But no one is dismissible.
I am a collaboration - the sum total of my experience. Subtract my first grade teacher from the equation and I become someone else. Change that waiter who gave me a tip on where to camp on Mount Desert Island and my catalogue of peak experiences reads differently.
That is what is happening in Iraq - and elsewhere - millions of life equations are being recalibrated. The impact only appears diffuse.