Like many of you, I spent time yesterday trying to absorb the tragedy in Boston and trying to understand why someone would do something like that. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think I will ever understand it or be able to make any sense of it, or any other senseless act of violence. In the words of author and Boston native Dennis Lehane in his Facebook post yesterday, “If your “CAUSE” involves the death of kids, it’s not a cause, it’s a pestilence.”
It’s easy in times and situations like these to see our world as spiraling towards evil or being overrun by cowards and haters who are willing to maim and kill people – even babies and children – they don’t even know who likely have at best a tenuous connection to whatever they are angry about.
It’s hard, sometimes even on a normal day, to see the good in the world and the beauty in it. I tell my children that it’s always easy to find the negative but you have to look and pay attention to see the positive. But it’s there.
I’m asking each of us today to look for the positive and – even more importantly – to be the positive that others can see. So, do something nice for someone today. Do it in memory of the people who died in a senseless act yesterday. Do it in honor of those who are fighting for survival or trying to recover from injuries today. Do it for their families and loved ones. Do it in thanks for first responders and good Samaritans. Do it in thanks for the efforts of the doctors, nurses, and other medical staff to save lives and give hope for recovery as best as they can. Do it to show the person or people who did this that we will not throw our hands up and accept evil unchallenged in this world. Do it because to not do it means that we accept this pestilence as the new way of the world.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~Edmund Burke
I hope you’ll take a moment to post a comment to say what you found beautiful in the world today or what your random act of kindness was.
Photo Credit: Martin Gommel via Compfight cc
Comments