On Being Humans

This reflection was written by a member of the HPR Editorial Board who wished to write anonymously.
There’s always a lot to think about when people die, and when people kill. I thought first of friends, and then of the victims I didn’t know. Then of those who knew people running, and then of those that carried out the attacks. I know this is a strange order. I thought about that too.
61 people were killed today in Iraq. There were 25 bombs detonated throughout the country—another day in what was otherwise a fairly standard week inside a fairly standard month inside a fairly standard, gruesome year for that country. In Iraq today, 61 people died at the hands of murderers and lives were shattered and families were broken, and no one was surprised.
It would have been a fairly standard day in Iraq if the Boston Marathon had not been the target of a terrorist attack as well. Two bombs went off within seconds of each other, claiming as their victims three dead and dozens more wounded (so far). These events have very little in common, but that is the roulette board of history—today was Monday, all over the world. People were murdered, and there’s nothing I can do except sit here and write. That is what I do, then.
When I think today about those whose lives were permanently altered today, by murderers or by something else—disease, poverty, crime, injustice—I think of how we are all connected, even more than we know. Only on some days do we see the sinewy tendons that connect us humans, as residents of Boston, Baghdad, and anywhere in between. On those days, we count what makes us human: certain death and never-ending camaraderie; bottomless despair and unceasing joy; the finality and continuity of it all and the awful grace of everything happening at once.
Photo Credit: Boston Magazine