Of natural disasters and changes in life... Part 1

It's been a few months of many thoughts and ideas, sleepless nights and tossing and turning. And finally, of seemingly impulsive, but actually well thought-out decisions. More about that another time, as the thought of it all is making my stomach churn slightly, and I don't want to put anything in writing until it is done.
Moving back to what I initially wanted to write about... Change. Around this time ten years ago I was waiting to start my MA courses, looking for a thesis idea or 10, loving my apartment, my life, my friends and my teaching/tutoring job. And then 9/11 happened. One day I was going about my daily activities, and the next I was watching 2 planes fly straight into the World Trade Center towers, and subsequently see them fall to the ground, into a cloud of dust, with my own eyes. As we all know this triggered off a set of major events in the world, most of which are still going on today, with no real positive outcome in sight. At the same time my idealist view of the human being was shattered into a million pieces, and I fell into a deep state of despair, culminating into depression that I couldn't run away from.
Ultimately this state of depression lead to a positive outcome, leading me away from the dream-like world I had created for myself, which included blinkers to anything that didn't correspond to my vision of what the world should be, and, finally, culminating into me being able to consolidate my idealism with the real world, and now to move towards using my ideals to maybe make at least some kind of difference. But it was a long road to get here, from that feeling of utter helplessness to one of strength.

And now it's time for another chapter, hopefully it won't take ten years for this one to close.

All that to really say: this week I sat through a 5.8 earthquake on the 40th floor of a high rise in Manhattan, watched (via Al Jazeera) a dictator of 41 years be removed from power (Gaddafi in Libya of course) and am now waiting for Hurricane Irene to pass right over my head sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. If this doesn't say that a change is needed, then I don't know what does!

I shall update on Irene tomorrow (if we still have power), as right now it's just bouts of heavy rain and a little wind.