Jack Tame: We have the power not to be scared

Don't let what happened in Paris make you fear the world.

Opinion

I was on air when they hit Paris. We were partway through Saturday Morning on Newstalk ZB, a programme that is generally relaxing and chilled and the sort of radio you tune into while watering the hydrangeas.

It was hard to get an early gauge on what had happened. There were conflicting reports. We couldn't say with certainty how many explosions or attacks there had been or how many people had been killed. But it was bad.

We scrapped the show. Our book review, a sport segment and a few songs were cast aside for the mayhem and despair. From our studio in New York we repeatedly crossed the Atlantic to our correspondent in France. At midnight in Paris I handed over and boarded the New York subway home.

Rumbling under the city on a rush hour A-train, I looked about the carriage. People had baggy clothing, jackets and backpacks. One guy had a black rubbish bag filled with I-don't-know-what. I counted the stops. And for perhaps the first time, I felt vulnerable.

Most of us have attended big concerts or sporting events. As a journo, I have covered US Presidents' visits and been to slums in Jamaica and Brazil. In Egypt and India, I have visited markets that have been attacked by suicide bombers in the past.

But of all places, here, on a nondescript A-Train an ocean from France, I felt vulnerable.

Rational thinking only soothes the mind so much. For most of us the odds of being caught in an attack are remarkably slim. But such is the power of fear.

A few days later, I mentioned the feeling to my barber.

"That's whack. I felt exactly the same coming into work," he said. "Walking through Times Square at 8.45, I was like ... whoa.

"But then I thought, screw that! That's what the bastards want. So I got a coffee and I took my time."

His colleague piped up from the balding head next to me. "You know, we all got the power not to be scared."

Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB Saturdays, 9am-midday.