The bombings in Boston remind us that public tragedies
lead to public grieving, and even if we don’t know anyone involved, when we see
photographs of the faces of those who were killed when they were happy, see the
faces of the injured in pain, see the despair on the faces of those who lost
loved ones, we also grieve. Public grieving becomes personal because we
identify with their sorrow, confusion, and anger. It doesn’t matter if
the photographs are of people in Boston, India, or South Africa. We are
affected and we feel compassion rise from within us because we are part of the
same human community.
When innocent people are killed, this is like a hammer
tapping on a porcelain vase. It sends cracks shooting through our
conviction that goodness is the ruling force in the world. How could this
happen? we ask, as if we hadn’t been paying attention to news reports of
bombings like this occurring around the world almost every day. The
pressure cooker bomb? It’s the bomb of choice in Afghanistan. How
did we not know this? We may take note of tragedies in far away lands
being reported on the evening news, but then we go back to what we were doing,
thinking “How sad, another bombing in…” But if we see a photograph of the
face or the limb that’s been blown off, then it becomes tangible and it affects
us personally. We grieve individual people, not numbers.
