Boston

It doesn't matter what I try to write this morning, I keep coming back to Boston. It's unfathomable the deplorable depths humanity will sink to and continue to glorify and defend. Whoever and whatever led to this scene of death and mutilation, someone, somewhere will start telling us there was a reason, a kernel of justification, our country should have or shouldn't have and it was just a few lives. What are three lives worth against the hundreds lost everyday elsewhere?

Three lives - and holding, for who knows what the final tally may be as dozens more lay fighting for their lives and learning to live without limbs that only yesterday had them standing on their own two feet, without arms that once held a loved one. Like a little 8 year old boy named Martin Richard, waiting for his father to finish the race, a little boy who is no more. His mother and sister survived, though his mother sustained brain injuries and his 6 year old sister lost a leg.

Trawling on Facebook this morning I saw people expressing solidarity and compassion, and I saw people questioning why they would. Really? Now we have to justify feeling empathy and sympathy for people undergoing horrible times? One response to an offering of empathy was Why? And what about the hundreds dying elsewhere everyday in similar circumstances? The implication appeared to be that the lives lost and bodies mutilated in Boston mattered less than the hundreds in wartorn countries.

 

Image: Truth University

I see. Tell that to the father whose family was just torn apart. See if he thinks the life of his 8 year old little boy matters less than any other life in the world. If his little daughter's leg matters less than any other leg in the world. If his wife's brain and her ability to function matters less than any other mother's brain in the world.

Because it's all relative and it works both ways. If we are to hold up some selfrighteous ideal about how every life matters and how big hearted we are to think of and honor those who go to their deaths anonymously every day, then we have to dole out the same respect to one life in a privileged country as we do to 100's in a country of war and terror. It can't be that the more lives anonymously lost count more than one known life lost. It can't be that geographical location determines whether it's a loss or inconsequential. That is just hypocritical.

Noone gets to choose where they are born, or how lucky or unlucky their circumstances may be. We only get to choose how we respond to our circumstances once we have arrived. Who knows what Martin Richard may have done with his life. He could have been the next Einstein for all we know.

And in a world that is all but stifled in fear and greed and hidden agendas, who the hell is ANYONE to question when someone offers an antidote, a heartfelt offering of grace and sympathy and compassion? Something the world could use a whole lot more of, last I checked. Something, with all due respect, those ridiculing people offering sympathy to the Bostonians, could use a whole lot more of.

Image: Someone on Facebook.....