During the season’s first Monday Night Football, a matchup between the Bills and the Jets, the camera paused on a healthy, smiling young man on the Bills sideline. It was Damar Hamlin, the Bills safety who, just over eight months ago, collapsed on the field after making a routine tackle. Like millions who were watching that January game, I stared in shock at the television as an ambulance drove onto the field and 65,000 fans in the stadium were silenced by this inexplicable and entirely unanticipated event. A healthy, strong, 24-year-old professional athlete had just dropped like a rag doll onto the field. 

It was only natural to feel a range of emotions as I saw Hamlin alive and in good spirits, from joy that he is back on the team, ready to play, to a nervous remembrance that his near-death experience could happen to anyone. There is a chaos in our world. It is usually held at bay by the limited control we exercise over nature and our resources. But when chaos intrudes into our regularly scheduled programming, it leaves us wondering when it will happen again. [ . . . ]  [read more]