What do you do when a national tragedy charges all the way from Boston through air waves and cellphones and tablets and laptops into your news feeds and timelines and hearts? Where do you go from there? What can you possibly do?
For those of you who do not know what happened, you’re not alone. There were two consecutive explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday afternoon.
The devices were left in black backpacks “made to resemble discarded property.” At least one of them was packed in a metal pressure cooker. Sharp objects like nails were implanted into the devices to cause as much damage as possible.
As of press time, three people died from the bombings. One of them was an 8-year-old boy who was running away from the first explosion with his family. He was killed by the second blast. The scene was bloody as more and more details emerged Monday.
Officials and authorities still don’t know who was behind these, obviously, planned attacks.
For right now, we’re left with a lot of unanswerable questions. Even if we discover the motive, we will never truly understand the why. It’s amazing that the unthinkable continues to happen in our country, that the acts of so few individuals have the power to affect every American.
Each year, the Boston Marathon takes place on Patriots’ Day, a civic holiday that remembers the first battles of the Revolutionary War. Past tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing and the end of the Waco, Texas siege both occurred on or near Patriots’ Day. This may end up having very little significance to what happened in Boston, but people are already speculating that Patriots’ Day was a driving factor behind the bombings taking place around the marathon.
It’s not our job to speculate or to furiously wonder. It’s not our place to become vigilantes. This is not the time for us to capitalize on people’s emotions. Just because we’re all fragile and vulnerable right now does not mean your company should make a heartfelt Facebook or Twitter post, hoping to connect its name with feelings of good fortune and well-meaning.
It’s not time for us to feel afraid or anxious; if you do feel those things, talk with someone because you’re not alone in that either.
It’s time for us to step up and do our part. Donate to a foundation or a service you trust. Reach out to strangers, especially if they’ve been affected by the events of this week.
We may not know why this happened or who did it, but we can certainly offer our help in this time of need.
There are a couple of Google Documents, like spreadsheets, that were started by people in the Boston area with the intent to “facilitate pair-ups between runners who’d been stranded in Boston and city residents who had housing to offer,” according to the Atlantic, and one that reaches out to the family of the young boy “offering the family everything from cooked meals to cleaning services to donations to a scholarship fund.”
We see no reason why the good should not prevail over the evil in this world.
