Days that change the country start off just like any other.
Kids hurry off to school, parents head into work and runners lace up their shoes, the same way all of them routinely do.
But Monday was unfortunately not like every other day. Monday, the innocence that goes along with the average person’s day was ripped out from underneath our collective feet.
Monday, we were reminded that there are people who see the peacefulness of the average day and want to shatter it violently.
And the part that perhaps hurts the most is that those people momentarily succeed. The routine, the innocence, the peace and our collective hearts are all shattered by events like the bombing of the Boston Marathon.
The only thing that can help the nation as a whole recover is time and a vow to never let it happen again.
The time is needed to mourn and only mourn. The time is needed to sit down and individually feel pain for those who were hurt or lost a loved one.
By attempting to feel the weight of the event, we can then hope to come together and attempt to lift some of that weight off the shoulders of those truly affected.
The time should never be used to get across an agenda. Already posts are going viral of people saying things like the attack happened due to American godlessness.
To use the time for anything other than simply reflecting on the pain others must feel is incomprehensible. But to go a step further and say that another American’s way of life, be it a Tea Partier, a socialist, a gun lover or an agnostic, is the problem that led to such horrific attacks should never even be mentioned while people mourn, if at all.
That is because recovering from events like the bombing of the marathon, the shooting in Newtown and the attacks of 9/11 have nothing to do with politics at all.
Instead, they are reminders that wherever there is peace, there will be people who look to break it, and where there is innocence there will be people who seek to tarnish it.
Though it is a tough lesson to learn, being aware of a lack of safety is the only positive way to learn a lesson from tragedies. Turning inward and against each other will only create further problems and further fighting, when all that is needed and wanted is peace and healing.
Once there has been time for reflection and mourning, we can begin to look for the problem. But until then, taking time to reflect on the pain of those less fortunate is the only way peace and healing can begin.