Anyhow, in the nightmare someone has broken into my home, the lights won’t work and my elderly mother is saying “Someone’s here!” I woke up breathing hard, my heart racing.  I feel I’ve stepped out of central casting for ‘violent crime victim’ or ‘stock PTSD character’.

I’d also make a good ‘alien abduction survivor’.  Yep. In case you’re not familiar with the abduction mythology, it’s full of people who check doors multiple times and have nightmares about people arriving, coming, being here to take them away. It makes me wonder how many people who genuinely think they were abducted are actually feeling the creeping existential awareness of their own vulnerability. Somehow it’s easier to think that the grays are to blame for this anxiety instead of ourselves and our fellow men.

For several years I’ve been struggling with career, finances and the usual measures of success. That struggle has come at the expense of my family, my health and some of my moral principles.  This way of living has become, in a sense, like that mugger last week with a gun in my face—a thief stealing from me, stealing relationships, principles and threatening even to steal my life.

I’ve been processing so much since being robbed, but one of the clearest lessons is that I have my values upside down. Had I been shot the other night, I’d have died mostly poor in the things that matter. Yes, colleagues and associates from across the state would have attended my funeral, and in that I’d have been rich. And grateful… But I’d have been so horribly poor in family and friends. Were deeply intimate personal relationships the measure of my wealth, I’d be buried in a pauper’s grave.

I no longer want to live life this way. Family and moral principles are more important than career. When I do die, of course I want people to praise my work. But if I’m confident that I’ve been true to my moral principles on my death bed, and I have even one person near me who I love and who loves me intensely, that’s my measure of a life lived well.

But when I logged in, I found the account was gone and with it important emails from friends and family.  Yahoo customer service (as they call it) assured me that there was no way Yahoo could retrieve those files. They did quickly remind me that I’d never run into this problem again if I start paying $20 per year for my account.

Yahoo is increasingly demonstrating the worst tendencies of the old internet guards.  They bundle their toolbar, their email is clunky, and instead of innovating they buy up good services such as Flickr and partner with other corporations such as Starbucks and Microsoft. Like its cousin AOL–who tried the same tactics and failed–seems destined to disappear into obscurity. And perhaps rightly so. It never fully understood the WWW (also like AOL), and every choice it makes in the interest of profit just makes them less and less relevant.

And then there’s this:  The Yahoo Brain Bleed Continues. A “Vital” Flickr ArchitectDeparts , via techcrunch.com

I remember saying, “Okay,” in the calmest voice I could manage, “here is my cell phone, and here is my wallet. That’s everything”.  Strangely, I remember thinking about getting shot, particularly how it would feel should he shoot me in my head, which was where the gun was pointed. In my mind I saw my skull separating into two pieces.

I said it was strange. At the time, though, it seemed dispassionate, stoic, numb. When he turned and ran away, I turned too and walked calmly the rest of the way to my house. I turned around once, only to see him drop and pick-up my cell phone. I remember being aware at that point that my hair felt like it was literally standing on end, like my scalp was being shocked with electricity.

I called 911 immediately from my house phone. The police showed up in a few minutes, and though I described the events to them in detail, I found I couldn’t give much of a description of the attacker.  In retrospect, I wish I’d looked more closely at him. But the untrained victim who has a gun in his face tends to focus almost entirely on the gun. So I’ve learned.

Since that night I’ve been just trying to notice how this affects me.  It’s made me feel vulnerable and paranoid. Unless distracted, I think almost constantly about what happened, what I could have done to better protect myself, and what steps I have to take to prevent it happening again.

For example, I shouldn’t have been out walking alone on a dead Sunday night on a dark street. This city is known for its high crime rate, and I live a few blocks from a sketchy part of town. And what was I doing while walking? Tuned out and staring at my smart phone. I was easy prey, and I was announcing it to anyone who was looking for prey.

I’m also considering buying a handgun for personal protection and a shotgun for home protection. My grandfather always had both, and I grew up hunting, so I’m not a complete stranger to guns. But I also never thought I’d feel the need actually to carry a gun. Because carrying a gun means being prepared to use a gun to kill an attacker.

Add to my constant thoughts the fact that I generally consider myself a pacifist. I say I grew up hunting, but more accurately I grew up around hunting and hunters. My grandfather was a hunter, and he would take me whenever I was willing to accompany him. I enjoyed the woods and shooting the guns, but I hated to see the limp quails, doves and rabbits he’d stuff in the pockets of his hunting jacket. Eventually I did what many kids do who feel that conflict–I stopped going hunting, even stop shooting. In my case, I also tried to eschew all violence. It’s complicated, so the easiest explanation is to say I’m a pacifist.

However, I know that if I had to choose between being killed the other night or my attacker being killed, I would not have made Christ’s choice. That bothers me. Yet what would bother me even more is if I were to stand by while an attacker killed someone I love. I believe I have a high moral duty to protect those I love from physical violence.

While thinking (constantly) about all of this, yesterday I rode my bike to a used bookstore for some distraction. There I found the following poem by George Mendoza entitled The Hunter I Might Have Been that has helped clarify my thoughts.

When I was a boy,

barely tall,

I shot a sparrow from a tree.

I held its limp body in my hands

and buried it still warm in the soft earth.

Then I fled.

I never touched a gun again.

But years came later when I was a man

I wondered,

oh, the hunter I might have been

had I but met a lion that first day

and not stilled that gentle sparrow’s call.

The man who robbed me at gunpoint was a kind of lion–a predator preying on the vulnerable.  My grandfather should have taught me how to use guns for home and self-defense first, not for killing doves and rabbits. It’s the predator killing prey that bothers me.

I hope I’m never attacked again, and more so I hope no one I love is ever attacked. But if we are, I want to be able to choose not to be a victim.