When I was in Canada last winter, while I was in the train station in Toronto, I saw a duffel bag sitting on the floor near one of the ticket counters. There was nobody near it. I kept looking at the bag and wondering when the security people would show up to make sure it wasn't a bomb.

Nobody did. After a while, a regular looking guy came and got it. He must have left it there while he went to the washroom. He just picked it up and walked away, and nobody seemed to think anything of it.

I was astonished. I turned to the person I was with and asked about it. He didn't seem to think it was any big deal. I told him that if something like that had happened in a major transportation hub in the US, the bomb squad would have come and they would have taken the bag away and they would have blown it up.

That experience was a bit of an eye-opener for me. It's a trade-off, I know. But we're tired here. We've had so many horrible images confronting us on our television screens in the last several years. And we've lost so many people to senseless tragedies. I don't want any of my fundamental freedoms taken away, but I would like to see more security in areas where we are vulnerable.

But I think I would also like to see us become more conscious of the impact that we, as a nation, have on the rest of the world, and to try to have more understanding of the problems that face other nations and other peoples. Especially when it comes to our practices of conspicuous consumption.

I know I'm rambling, but I think I needed to do that.