I want to get mad when I think about what happened in Boston yesterday. I want to feel righteous anger at the abject horror and senselessness of the death and maiming of so many innocent people, and to an extent I do. But only to an extent. What I mainly feel when I think of those things is sadness. That’s what I feel this morning.
I’m sitting here on my couch and considering all “we” can do now, and all the freedoms we have in this country. I think of the many technological and scientific advances over the last few decades. I think of how “tolerant” of so many things public opinion says we have to be to be considered enlightened and…well, normal people.
And then I think of IEDs full of ball bearings in trash cans at or near the finish line of one of the United States’ most storied athletic competitions. I think that while the perpetrator(s) of this affront to humanity likely did not achieve destruction on the level they intended, they accomplished more than enough. I think about ordinary people and first responders picking up amputated limbs and taking off their belts to save lives, and in some cases not being able to.
It makes me want to cry, or scream, and fight back against something. How do you fight back against hate, though? Can you? Can we? Can we overcome something like this while at the same time resisting what feels like the normal desire to seek retribution?
I think of people beating down Sikhs after 9/11 and I pray that kind of nonsense doesn’t happen again. It’s just so easy to respond to hate with hate.
So I’m thinking about all that and I can see why people talk all the time about the end being near. Sometimes I want it to be because I know what will follow after. But right now I just feel sad. And feeling that way led me to this beautiful song this morning.
A Work in Progress 