Reactions & Reflections 4/15/2013

If you’re reading this, for whatever reason, thank you. I didn’t want to post something directly to Facebook or anything, there’s enough people spouting things on there and it’s not really my style.

I want to paint a picture, put the thoughts and the emotion on a page, mostly for myself about today. Because it seemed important, because it’s cathartic, because we all share this experience differently, and because in many ways we’re probably feeling much the same. So if you’ll try to stick with me, I’ll try to make this somehow coherent.

I will never forget this day. I don’t have an option, a choice, in the matter. I’ll have a permanent mental video, like someone suddenly turned on a black box recorder on my optic nerves, of the moments after I read that first tweet that an explosion had been reported at the Boston Marathon. It’ll go onto that unfortunate shelf in my brain next to the Oklahoma City bombing – I was 6, I remember sitting 3 ft. from my TV, my grandma was watching me and my cousins, I was playing w/ the big Legos, and on that TV screen was that collapsed section of building – and 9/11 – stuck in traffic on a school bus in downtown Cleveland, hushed 7^th grade voices talking about something having happened in NYC, then arriving back at NRMS and watching in disbelief the news on the TV in our classroom…the lights off. Today I was at work, awaiting a quote for a purchase order, doing homework, refreshing Twitter and Facebook too often. Then, we put CBS on the computers, and listened. I kept refreshing twitter, waiting for more news. I will always be able to hear, in my head and my heart, the sound of the first bomb going off in one of the videos. I was shocked, trying to comprehend what I was watching. You won’t forget where you were today. You won’t get a choice in it either.

But, I do get a choice in what I do next. In the coming days, we’ll learn what happened. We’ll watch as information comes out on those responsible. We’ll follow as a city, a state, a nation, and a world seek truth and justice. We’ll be crushed by stories of loss and sadness. But, we’ll also see, in the face of great violence, malice, and evil, the power of humanity; the power of love; the power of courage; the power of hope. I choose to believe in that humanity, that love, that courage, that hope. I choose to share in those. Because so long as we have those things in our world, violence, evil, and hate of any kind cannot win. So yeah, I’m going to embrace this human experience. I’m going to love unconditionally. I’m going to act courageously. And I’m going to forever place my faith and hope in you to do the same.

So yeah, that’s where I’m at right now. I don’t know about you, but today I want to run a marathon.