I tried to avoid TV all day Monday. I didn’t want to see images of people torn to shreds by the bomb that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It feels all too often of late that we are confronted with these tragedies (I hear your rebuttal that any tragedy is one too many.) I feel sickened, disturbed. There are moments when it is difficult to have faith in humanity, when we watch people murder one another. There are moments when it would be easy to throw our hands in the air and give in to desensitization. It would be all too easy to say it hurts too much to keep caring, to keep watching the images on our screens. We must not give in to that easy option, because through the smoke, ruin, and broken homes and lives, we will find a light.

When I finally did watch the video of the bomb going off, it wasn’t the people running away from the explosion that I noticed; it was those running toward it. We must mourn those who lost their lives Monday; we must do all we can to help those still struggling to keep theirs in the ER. But we must also celebrate a side of humanity that only tragedy can reveal. Today was scary. I will be the first to admit that. An event that is an annual celebration in Boston, more than just a regular holiday, was taken from us. If they can take the Boston Marathon, what can’t they take?

Answer: they can’t take the heroes among us. They can’t take the fact that while there are bad people in this world, there are far more people willing to sacrifice themselves to help another. A Mr. Rogers quotation circulated the Internet shortly after everyone had found out about the events. The quotation reads, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘look for the helpers.’ You will always find people who are helping.”

That quotation prompted the thought behind this column. We are a broken people. Our existence marred by our own desire to harm one another, to bring incomprehensible pain on each other. It would be easy to accept that and give up on the world. It seems that I keep coming back to that word: easy. It would be easy to walk away; easy to see the things we are capable of doing to each other and stop believing. It would be easy to look at the eight-year-old girl who lost her life in the blast while she was running, in the memory of the victims of the Newtown mass shooting and give up. But easy is never the answer. We are not to do the easy things in life. That eight-year-old girl wasn’t doing the easy thing being out on that course running, the first responders weren’t doing the easy thing when they raced in the direction of the explosion with no regard for their own lives.

It would be easy to focus on the tragedy of today, and to some extent we must to honor those who lost their lives. But it is our job to forego the easy option. We must look at the images of today and highlight those runners who kept on running to the blood bank to do their part to help. We must look at those who shone a light in a world obscured by smoke and pain. We cannot defeat the evil in this world by giving it its day. We will defeat evil in this world by showing it we cannot be broken. Good people will always come out on top; heroes will always live among us. We feel broken watching the videos of the bombs going off, knowing there were five more located around Boston waiting to be set off when they were discovered. We feel broken today mourning the loss of yet another child. But like the phoenix from the ashes of this bomb, the good among us will rise again.

 

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