Thursday, February 5, 2009

STRIKE!!

I've been thinking lately about the word, "strike" and its multiplicity of meanings. For instance:

You don't want a member of your union that's on strike to strike someone with their picket sign because it would strike a member of the press as something that he or she would not want to strike from the record.

Today they said on the news that the "Miracle on Hudson" was caused by a bird strike. It leads one to imagine a group of dastardly French Canadian geese with mustaches and accents plotting a suicide mission to take down a plane. Meanwhile the people on the ground are saying, "How dare they! How dare they fly and fly together and fly where our planes need to go?"

No matter what the use of the word, it seems to be something that comes out of nowhere, something that is unexpected and often painful. Then, the question becomes how we recover from the strike, how we pick ourselves up and continue.

This week I'm trying to recover from a strike that struck me and left me without words for some time and with a lingering sense of doubt. Luckily, with some edification from friends, the talking it through seems to have repaired the strikewound. Hopefully, I can also get better at dodging the birds before they're in the engine!

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