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| Patriot’s Day - 4/16/13 | Thanks to everyone who checked in on me. I’m fine. I want to get a few thoughts down about what happened yesterday. I will try and be brief.
Copley Square is a neighborhood I’ve literally been wandering around for half my life. Emerson College is at one end of Boylston Street and Berklee at the other. My favorite bar in Boston is a couple of blocks away from the marathon finish line. There was a time it was the lounge for a large percentage of my social network. Hell, more than one of my friends met their wives there, so when I say this all hits close to home that’s what I mean.
To be honest, I’ve never liked the marathon. It is always a big inconvenience for something I’m not really in to. But I don’t like it in the same way I don’t like Christmas. It’s a tradition and important, even if it’s not for me. Life is better for having these things and so once a year I grumble about the damn crowds on my streets and then get on with my life.
I don’t know who is responsible for what happened yesterday and I don’t know why they felt the need to do what they did. It doesn’t really matter. It was an act of terrorism, no question. That act was meant to inspire fear. Fear that your own streets, your home, isn’t safe anymore. I’d be lying if I said that at some level that didn’t work. Looking at photos of bloodstained sidewalks, I didn’t have to be told where they were taken. I knew. I know. That was done to my people. To guests in my neighborhood. To me. That said, giving in to this fear is how they win.
My life is pretty crazy at the moment, but next chance I get I’m going to my bar, to that neighborhood, not through some morbid sense of curiosity, but to counterattack with normalcy. I will go and raise a pint and drink to the people who lost their lives or limbs. To all those who walked away with just emotional scars. To their families. To the first responders. To Boston. I’ll take a moment to let the fear really hit me while I’m there, in my neighborhood, where that horrible thing happened. Then I’m going to get back to enjoying my community, all the more thankful for my health and wellbeing, because that’s how I tell them they can’t beat me. They can’t beat us. I may have been frightened, but I. Am. Not. Afraid.
Thank you.
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