Before Manchester

At five o'clock in the morning, I stepped out the door for a day of touring in Copenhagen with Renault. Extra early, because security at Schiphol is currently thirty minutes to three hours. And when I was packed in that line, with zigzagging poles on that few square meters of linoleum, it flashed through my mind for a second: imagine someone getting that idea in their delighted head...

In Manchester, thousands of fans gathered for Ariana Grande's concert, especially girls. Teenage girls. Excited, maybe even a little nervous, and the coolest outfit with Ariana earphones had been over the chair in the bedroom for a week. Girls who had been looking forward to this evening for weeks, months, or even a year. Maybe a mother furrowed her forehead with concern, but still let her daughter go because, yes, letting go is part of it. And then this. This. Something you don't think about, something you don't want to think about. I hope there were many young, sweet, and excited girls who didn't think about that for a moment and only thought about Ariana. Still humming their favorite song on the way out. Because with something so heartbreaking, you never, ever want to have to take that into account.

When you go to work in New York, eat ice cream on a boulevard in Nice, buy a tree at a Christmas market in Berlin, check in at the airport in Brussels, enjoy at a café or at a concert in Paris, and now, of course, when you go see Ariana in Manchester. Things that you and I do, places that you and I go, but where people become afraid.

“Things that you and I do, places that you and I go”

Fear is a normal emotion. You deal with it every day. It ensures that you maneuver through those seven ditches and just slide your legs safely under the table at the end of the day. But what do you do when something intangible sows fear, something you can't really do anything with and don't understand? Because that's what happens. In the line at Schiphol, I used to only think about enough sunscreen and the beach that plane was taking me to, but never about whether something like that could happen. It wasn't there. Oh, it was there, of course, but not here. And now it is.

I hear a bit more often that I should be careful in a crowded place or at an extremely busy time. And I see people skipping a trip to Paris because... Yes, because of what exactly? I get it, but I refuse. Precisely because of Manchester, maybe even before Manchester. They weren't scared, and neither am I.

And I really hope you think that too. I could bring up all sorts of cliché nonsense about how you get in the car every day or cross the street, but I actually think we don't need that at all. It's simple: don't let yourself be scared. For Manchester.