Boston

Twelve years ago, I was nowhere near the events that happened on 9/11.  I was three thousand miles away, and there was no one close to me in NY whose safety I worried about.  It still hit me like an implosion, as it did all of us.  Fellow humans were annihilated, and that will always hurt my soul. 

Today, I am in Boston’s backyard.  I have friends who work in Boston, who go there regularly. I have loved ones who will be there in a month’s time for an event.  I was there last Thursday night, myself, seeing a movie.  And today, after hearing about the Boston Marathon explosion, it was another implosion on my psyche.   No one I knew was hurt or killed, thank Goddess, but again, fellow human beings were, and my soul cracks a little bit more.  As all of ours do. 

I cannot even comprehend how humans can do this kind of thing to one another.   I don’t grok how that would feel to WANT to do that to other human beings.   To be so disconnected from your species as to want to see this happen to them...Who ARE you??    Every time I hear about people who do this kind of thing, be it bombs or shootings where the perpetrator also kills himself, I become enraged—WHY take the lives of others when you were going to kill yourself anyway?  How DARE you intentionally shatter someone else’s world?   It’s hard enough to have to lose people we love in a New York minute to car accidents, disease, fires, floods and earthquakes—you have the gall to add deliberate murder to this pain?   How DARE you??? 

And as I listen to the news reports come in, I see the people being treated in triage, being taken to the hospital, being comforted by strangers.  And this...this makes me cry.   Because even in the midst of this hellish carnage, I’m seeing our humanity lift itself up, surrounded as it is by its basest nature.   Whenever there is a disaster, natural or man-made, I notice people rushing in without a second thought to help one another.  The firefighters and emergency crews, the doctors and nurses, the ones who keep their heads and pull out the ones who are injured, who are emotionally breaking down, the ones who hug people they don’t know on the street, the ones who risk their own lives to save those in need, the ones who help reunite families, the ones who reassure kids that this isn’t everything.  The world isn’t all scary like this.  That it’s going to be allright, hard as it is to believe right now.  

I keep seeing a meme on Facebook saying this:

“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.‘ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” -Mr. Rogers

I’d seen it before, and it resonated with me then.  It vibrates with meaning now.  These people are heroes.  They’ll shrug and say they were just doing their jobs, or it’s what anyone else would do.  Not anyone.  YOU.  You forgot about yourself and cared about someone else for a time.  You put yourself on the line for someone you don’t know, have no history with, have no emotional ties to.   You did this so that someone else can live, or start the healing process.  You loved a stranger that much.  You ARE heroes.   You are the very definition of heroes. 

And I admire, and I respect and I salute you all. 

Thank you for saving a part of the human race today.  Thank you for renewing the hope of all those who are watching this unfold.  Thank you for your selflessness, your bravery, your instinct.  Thank you for seeing the big picture and being affected enough by it to do something about it.  Thank you for being someone’s guardian angel.  

THANK YOU.