Post Boston Bombing: Idiocy and Illumination
As for me, I will not use several hundred words to play armchair detective. Instead, I will share the words of every day citizens. They don’t have talk shows or sidekicks. They don’t dominate the airwaves with politically motivated verbal sewage. Only love. Love for their fellow man or for a city or for running. They don’t care about proving who did it more than offering prayers and support.
In times of great tragedy, we sometimes reach out to those we love. Those we may have not spoken to in a while or mend bridges that may have been broken. Always giving thanks for what we have. “Today I am most thankful for…”
–Duran Martinez
“Boston Bombings…Moments like these, as TERRIBLE as they are, don’t show our weakness, but our strength as a nation!!” – Dawn Younge
And finally, the words of Patton Oswalt, simply and beautifully put.
If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”
Links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patton-oswalt/patton-oswalt_b_3088337.html
Upper Image: : Chris Matthews at the 2011 Time 100 gala; author: David Shankbone; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
Lower Image: Comedian Patton Oswalt; author: Gage Skidmore; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
