On my way uptown yesterday, I stopped and thanked three NYPD officers in the subway station at City Hall.

I shook their hands, looked them in the eyes and told them that I—and many other New Yorkers—felt a lot better knowing that they have their shit together and have our backs.

I truly believe this.

I believe that our city’s first responders are what keeps the fabric of our society rolling forward in the face of hate attacks on all of us.  Like the bombing in Chelsea this weekend.

This was a first for me.

It felt like the right thing to do. And trust me, I could see it in their eyes that it was really a surprise and appreciated by them.

We learn to ignore the ugly edges of reality.

Be it the self-centered glossiness of media reporting. The busyness of life. Behavioral and cultural self preservation.

Personally, ever since 9/11, I’ve internalized the increasing hatred of our secular and diversified culture by the crazies. I have, as we all have, had an ongoing series of painful, empathetic aha’s as these horrors struck home with attacks and explosions cross the world.

One after another.

As a downtown New Yorker, I felt individually affronted in my neighborhood when the towers fell. But over the years with other incidents around the globe, I felt it was over there, not here. Happening to someone else, not to me.

Till this weekend with the Chelsea bombing.

Maybe it was the randomness of this particular act of terror.

Not the emblematic falling of icons of our civilizations like the towers, but a seemingly disconnected and amateur act of violence against New York as a collection of people.

Against just people, like myself. Living life and walking home from dinner or to work. Strolling to get a glass of wine at the bar with a friend. Or walking their dogs.

We learn to look at places like Israel where violence, random hateful acts is always a possibility, as far away.

I look at the resilience of their culture in the face of it, as something to be studied and admired but something, not our own.

No longer.

With this act and spew of other acts of violence it’s touched home for me that it is not over there.

But here. But me that is hated. Being attacked. Me and mine that is in danger.

My friend Hue Rhodes, film maker and entrepreneur, posted this link on his Facebook page from a friend who lived in the immediate vicinity of the explosion.

Read it.

It speaks to the reality of this particular occurrence. The horror of it. The violence that is part of our lives, not just in NY, but everywhere.

And as importance, a first-hand testimony to the poverty of the news media in reporting it. And the organization and heroism of the NYPD, NYFD and Homeland Security team that were on the scene in literally a minute, taking control.

There is truth in the fact that the very worse acts of sick, crazy hate-driven people drive community and collectivism in the cultures in the cross hairs of these attacks.

I choose to believe this after this weekend.

Self preservation certainly but I believe it is the very core of what makes my town special, and yours.

I’m not driven by fear.  I didn’t prior, and not sure I will now, become more obviously anxious or cognizant to this threat even though I’m the epitome of the enemy to the haters of secularism, freedom and tolerance.

But something has turned a corner a bit.

I’m not going to dwell on this. I don’t want to move to a mountain top or buy a gun but I’m not content to ignore it.

I’m getting on a plane tonight and in my trip through Europe I’ll be in places, like here where attacks have happened. In other places where unfortunately it is likely that it will.

I’m not hesitant. But I’m aware.

I’m not unnerved, but not oblivious to the stereotypes of terrorism that I’ll register out of the corner of my eye when I see people in the subways or situations on the streets.

I won’t necessarily feel safer when I cue up on TSA lines but I’ll be less annoyed with the delay.

But mostly, I’m simply realizing that this is reality. My reality as well.

That me for simply living my life, is the enemy. That these people, are not people at all but a scourge to be eliminated.

My response will be who I vote for this year in the elections, and my heightened empathy and connectedness to these occurrences as they continue to happen.

Fear is not a good response.

Awareness though is and that is my take away.

And maybe that in itself is a step towards being a bit safer.

And with a more honest sense of being grateful and protective of what I have.