On the 22nd of March, a week after I broke up with my long-term boyfriend, overcome with the sense of freedom one generally expects after ending a relationship, I settled down to indulge in Mamma Mia – alone, single, and prepared to sing my heart out. Twenty minutes into my sing-a-long extravaganza, however, my phone began blowing up with the news that a terrorist attack had taken place outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. The proceeding two hours involved me sitting glued to my TV screen, with my phone in hand, trying desperately to keep up-to-date with what was going on. A sense of fear I haven’t felt too often in my adult life was brewing, and the unease I was experiencing put my personal situation into some perspective.

Last night, June 4th, revelling in the positivity I was granted by the nearing completion of my exams, I wrapped myself up in my duvet and set out to watch Little Miss Sunshine (again – alone, single, and hoping to live vicariously through the joy of fictional characters). No sooner had the opening credits finished rolling, though, than my phone was alive with bad news once more. Something had happened on London Bridge, something I initially elected to ignore as I threw my phone back to the foot of my bed. But the seeds of anxiety had been sown, and it wasn’t long before I was trawling through news websites and reliving the confusion and distress I had felt only two months earlier.

London is my home. It is the home of my friends and my family and people I care a lot about. But I didn’t spend an hour crying last night, trying desperately to rationalise my fear and pull myself together, because I feared anyone I knew was caught up in it – although that is quite frankly more of a likelihood than a possibility. What shook me last night, more so than ever before, was the realisation that what is more and more frequently occurring in Britain, and indeed what takes place day after day in countries across the globe, is not the ‘inhumane’ act we constantly hear it demarcated as.

The three men who drove a van into innocent civilians, and proceeded to stab and assault Londoners and tourists enjoying their Saturday evenings – killing seven and wounding forty-eight – were as human as you or me. They were as human as Salman Abedi, who killed twenty-two concert goers in Manchester a fortnight ago, just as they are akin to Thomas Mair, who murdered Jo Cox last year.

“Anti-Islamic sentiment will not recede just because we tell it to; fear is all-consuming and mind-controlling, and is not proportional to probability or rationality.”

As an anthropology student, my heart lies in the study of humanity; my passion and fascination with individuals and societies is what I am dedicating my time here to, and what guided me to the goal of working in social care once I graduate. Last night, shaken with fear and paralysed with shock, wishing I could somehow turn off the empathy I was experiencing, I began to question whether humanity was as wonderful as I naively like to believe it to be.

Listening to eye-witness accounts of young women, who could very well have been me, being stabbed repeatedly in a cold, merciless fashion and seeing images of children crying, cradled in their mother’s arms as they flee from the police cordon, shattered the understanding I have of how humans function and behave. How anyone, irrespective of motivations, could massacre so calmly such harmless and helpless individuals, is something I suddenly realised I could not come close to comprehending.

Today, however, as I watch interviews with restaurant owners who helped get people to safety, of taxi drivers who tried to get between the terrorists and the public, and of policemen and paramedics who willingly ran towards the danger, my perspective has shifted once more. Events like this are caused by, and thus emphasise, the absolute worst of humanity; a side we rarely like to acknowledge exists or ever really succeed in understanding. But they also encourage and facilitate the other end of the spectrum; an echelon of humanity usually untouched in ordinary social life. “Everyone’s helping each other in any way they can, nothing was an issue,” recalled one restaurant owner, as he sought solace in the “nice human feel” that those caught up in the attack experienced.

As clichéd as it has become to talk of the humanity and resilience demonstrated by communities after tragic events like those of last night, I have never before understood how significant that sense of morale and defiance honestly is. The fear sparked and incubated by the acts of those outside of society, capable of summoning the absolute depths of depravity and evil and using them to cause chaos and harm, does not subside easily. It takes more than reminding people of the experience of others, half way around the world, to placate the terror felt by those affected. Anti-Islamic sentiment will not recede just because we tell it to; fear is all-consuming and mind-controlling, and is not proportional to probability or rationality.

I have often struggled as much to empathise with those who generalise and stereotype the people they perceive to be at fault for these crimes, as I have with those who actually commit them. But last night, engulfed in panic, I could - for the first time - understand how fear can become an efficient method of domination; how anxiety and dread can fester and breed the intolerant attitudes I all too easily dismiss as stupidity and ignorance.

“I have never before understood how significant that sense of morale and defiance honestly is”

In light of the strong possibility of further acts of terrorism on British soil in the weeks and months to come, perhaps it is time we reassess how we deal with the fear we are living in; beginning with accepting that it is there. I was able to reconcile my own fear and disgust today when I relocated the positive humanity demonstrated last night, and console myself as I remembered that the spectrum of human morality is heavily weighted at the positive end. But there are many who will not be able to see past their vilification of Islam, of immigrants, of people that resemble that which they most fear; and while this position is indisputably flawed and potentially very dangerous – approaching it sans-empathy, with little openness or hope for something better has, thus far, failed. A better approach would feasibly be to respond to this hatred, this ‘inhumanity’, with the same compassion and comradery that was demonstrated last night in Borough Market.

A tribute to Manchester

It may be naïve to suggest that we begin to tackle this issue with benevolence and sympathy, and you may think such people are not deserving of it, but if I have learnt anything from the recent attacks in our country, it is that we are all human: however disappointing and shameful that may be. Humanity has the strength and resolve to cope with terrorists wreaking havoc on innocent children, and yet we are petty in our attempt to overcome differences in opinion. We have a responsibility, to ourselves as well as others, to understand and respect the fear caused by these events, and to work together as a whole to overcome it