As the country, if not the world, struggles to come to terms
with what happened in Boston on Monday, the Internet is filled with people’s
stories of how close they were to the blasts—how many minutes before or after
4:09 they crossed the finish line, where they were standing when the explosions
went off, whom else they knew who was there.
What is it about tragedy that makes us all want to be so
close to it, all the while feeling exceptionally grateful that it didn’t happen
directly to us? I struggle with this question, because I’ve felt this
compulsion to draw a thread of connection, however thin, between myself and
those at the heart of so many recent tragedies that have befallen communities
I’ve been a part of.
Last year’s Seattle coffeeshop shooting touched me deeply, because I ran by the Racer Café often, and because several of the
victims were friends of a friend. The avalanche at Stevens Pass that took the lives of three talented skiers in February 2012 hit me hard as well,
at least in part because Chris Rudolph and I had recently chatted about a story
for Western Snowsports on Washington ski
areas for which I was helping solicit photos. After 9-11, I shivered to learn
that my dad’s colleague’s nephew was aboard the plane that hit the north tower.
Are these scenarios any more or less tragic, due to my
flimsy connections to them? Certainly not. Did I really know any of the victims? No. Is it unfair to those who
did, to their friends and families, to say that their deaths, through however
many degrees of separation, hit close to home for me? Why do I even feel
compelled to write about these tragedies in the first place, when in reality,
they’re so far removed from my own life, linked only—in this case—by a shared
passion for running long distances?
On September 11, 2001, I was sitting in a journalism class
when the second tower fell. Our teacher seized the opportunity to have us all
spend the class period writing articles on the events as they transpired,
chronicling the reactions of those around us. Even for the sake of education,
something about it didn’t feel quite right to me—this grabbing at others’
misfortunes and transforming them into “opportunities.” It was an aspect of
journalism that, at the time, rubbed me the wrong way.
A year later, on the anniversary of 9-11, I wore an “I Love
NY” shirt to class, among other red-white-and-blue accessories. A classmate
indirectly berated my choice, ranting to the class about those who’d boiled the
tragedy of others down to cheap commodities and material patriotism, who’d used
it as an opportunity to draw attention to themselves … I felt deeply shamed,
even as her accusations didn’t ring true with what I felt my motivations had
been when I got dressed that morning. What I wanted was to express some sense
of solidarity with those who’d experienced losses I couldn’t even fathom;
perhaps my method of doing so was misguided, or amounted to little more than an empty gesture, but it was what made sense to me
at the time.
Here I am more than a decade later, in the role of an actual
journalist rather than a student one, working for a publication that, by its
very nature, cannot ignore the events in Boston on Monday—no matter how much
I’d like to crawl inside my Internet-less hole of a home, forget that any of it
really happened and wait for my broken heart to mend.
But I can’t do that. This is my community, the magazine’s
readership. Writers and athletes I’ve been working with on stories were there;
our readers and subscribers were there; countless friends and acquaintances
from the greater running community were there.
News and social media reports indicate that hundreds of
runners and bystanders ran toward the blasts, rather than away from them. In
the most literal sense, such actions are a display of our very human desire to
help others, to experience solidarity in our
increasingly isolated society. Many reports thus far are overwhelmingly
about the heroic efforts of everyday people aiding one another, rather than
conjecturing about the coward who caused it all; for this kind of journalism, I
am grateful.
The truth is that people die, often in gruesome ways, every
single day. Yes, I am deeply saddened that the Boston Marathon will never be
the same again. (I still hope to run it someday.) I am saddened, too, that the running community as a whole has
been tainted. I am even more heartbroken for the victims themselves and their
families, whose lives have been irrevocably damaged.
Perhaps another of the great horrors of Monday is that
the images plastered across the media of bloodied and dismembered bodies are
ones that are in our papers every day, but rather than on the front page,
they’re tucked into the backs, under headlines about countries that seem so far
removed from our daily lives that we become immune to feeling anything for the
atrocities they report. We flip the page and move on with our lives, and for
our indifference, we feel a little less human—or, at least, I do.
Maybe, then, we find ways to articulate our tenuous personal
connections to tragedies like Monday’s not because we seek attention, but
because we want to feel empathy. In the midst of our generally comfortable
lives, we want to experience the very things that most make us human—our
connection to others, our compassion for the suffering of strangers, our sense
of global community.
My heart goes out to all affected by Monday’s senseless
tragedy. I do not wish to use it as an opportunity or soapbox—and perhaps,
despite my best intentions, that is what I’m doing here anyway. But for what
it’s worth … humanity, I still have faith in you. I am grateful to live in a
beautiful world where love and community still far outshine tragedy.
