"Did you hear what happened at Boston?"
"Don't tell me, I have the race recorded for later."
"No, it's not really about the race. You need to turn on the news."
And another moment in our world turned upside-down . . .
I am not one of those Boston people - you know the one's that run Boston every year and seem to live/breathe the course: they know their mile splits, they know when to expect the tunnel of sound called Wellesley, and they know where on the course heartbreak hill lies - but I did grow up aware of the Boston mystique. It was the marathon I always wanted to run as a kid, and a few years ago (2008) I got the chance to play out that childhood daydream. I didn't plan on returning: it was cool, goal accomplished, on to the next thing. But the mayhem of last year changed that for me. Something about last year's attack really hit me . . . hit me more personally than I might have expected.
Look, I tend to be pretty cynical and tend to emotionally distance myself from a lot of the stupid crap that goes on in this world, while simultaneously being fairly aware of how much stupid crap goes on around the world. I sometimes think our species is an evolutionary dead-end with violence being its chief fault: bomb this country, burn that village, kill this believer, desecrate that church. In the global cycle of humanity's violence Boston was unfortunately nothing all that out of the ordinary . . . but it struck me. It was not a distant enough event for me to rationalize away the images. It didn't simply feel like another piece of digitized news on the screen, it felt like an attack directed at people I knew.
In a world closer to the ideal, we would have all long ago joined a movement of pacifists and shut down the global industrial-military complex; stood as a human barrier on the border of one country or another putting an end to war as tanks were halted in their race from one flagged capital to the other. But instead we get caught up in simply trying to make it through life and the heroic notions of our childhood fade away. The adult infused wisdom that tells us the world will always be this way becomes our forgetful mantra. I would go so far as to say, it often feels like there is little/nothing we can do to fundamentally change the world for the better.
Last spring, I sat there watching the images of a joyful day thrown asunder wondering what in the world was wrong with our species. Are we destined to never move beyond this point in our global history? The point in our history that finds violence the answer to so many things? How long has this moment lasted? The entire 20th century? The past few millennium? Since Lucy?
And one of my students asked me, "Aren't you afraid to run Boston?"
It hadn't really occurred to me. I am more afraid to not run Boston than to run Boston. I am worried/scared that maybe the world really is changing. I want to return to childhood daydream's of peace and security. I grew up in the heart of the Cold War, as an American living on the western side of Germany's divided border, and strangely my childhood and the world around me felt more secure and peaceful than the one most of my students see as representing life today.
Sadly, running Boston isn't going to change the world. It's not going to stop the next terrorist attack or war from happening. It's not even my "A" race for this spring. I could simply continue sitting on my couch, or in a bar in Boston nursing the ankle I sprained at BoSho last weekend, and watch the race on teevee and the world would be just about identical. But instead, I will be lining up and chasing after another sub-3 . . . and yet I would suggest if ever time has meant nothing in a race to me this would be the one.
I simply want the chance to be out there on the course again, stating ever so simply/quietly that the world must become something different. The reason I want to run hard is because that is what Boston deserves. That is what the people who didn't get a chance to finish last year deserve. I need to suffer a little bit in that good-ole-fashion way that pushing yourself in a race lets you suffer. I try not to cry in public, but any starting line tears will be about trying to both remember and redefine what took place last year.
I am a runner. We are runners. And so I will run.
I am not one of those Boston people - you know the one's that run Boston every year and seem to live/breathe the course: they know their mile splits, they know when to expect the tunnel of sound called Wellesley, and they know where on the course heartbreak hill lies - but I did grow up aware of the Boston mystique. It was the marathon I always wanted to run as a kid, and a few years ago (2008) I got the chance to play out that childhood daydream. I didn't plan on returning: it was cool, goal accomplished, on to the next thing. But the mayhem of last year changed that for me. Something about last year's attack really hit me . . . hit me more personally than I might have expected.
Look, I tend to be pretty cynical and tend to emotionally distance myself from a lot of the stupid crap that goes on in this world, while simultaneously being fairly aware of how much stupid crap goes on around the world. I sometimes think our species is an evolutionary dead-end with violence being its chief fault: bomb this country, burn that village, kill this believer, desecrate that church. In the global cycle of humanity's violence Boston was unfortunately nothing all that out of the ordinary . . . but it struck me. It was not a distant enough event for me to rationalize away the images. It didn't simply feel like another piece of digitized news on the screen, it felt like an attack directed at people I knew.
In a world closer to the ideal, we would have all long ago joined a movement of pacifists and shut down the global industrial-military complex; stood as a human barrier on the border of one country or another putting an end to war as tanks were halted in their race from one flagged capital to the other. But instead we get caught up in simply trying to make it through life and the heroic notions of our childhood fade away. The adult infused wisdom that tells us the world will always be this way becomes our forgetful mantra. I would go so far as to say, it often feels like there is little/nothing we can do to fundamentally change the world for the better.
Last spring, I sat there watching the images of a joyful day thrown asunder wondering what in the world was wrong with our species. Are we destined to never move beyond this point in our global history? The point in our history that finds violence the answer to so many things? How long has this moment lasted? The entire 20th century? The past few millennium? Since Lucy?
And one of my students asked me, "Aren't you afraid to run Boston?"
It hadn't really occurred to me. I am more afraid to not run Boston than to run Boston. I am worried/scared that maybe the world really is changing. I want to return to childhood daydream's of peace and security. I grew up in the heart of the Cold War, as an American living on the western side of Germany's divided border, and strangely my childhood and the world around me felt more secure and peaceful than the one most of my students see as representing life today.
Sadly, running Boston isn't going to change the world. It's not going to stop the next terrorist attack or war from happening. It's not even my "A" race for this spring. I could simply continue sitting on my couch, or in a bar in Boston nursing the ankle I sprained at BoSho last weekend, and watch the race on teevee and the world would be just about identical. But instead, I will be lining up and chasing after another sub-3 . . . and yet I would suggest if ever time has meant nothing in a race to me this would be the one.
I simply want the chance to be out there on the course again, stating ever so simply/quietly that the world must become something different. The reason I want to run hard is because that is what Boston deserves. That is what the people who didn't get a chance to finish last year deserve. I need to suffer a little bit in that good-ole-fashion way that pushing yourself in a race lets you suffer. I try not to cry in public, but any starting line tears will be about trying to both remember and redefine what took place last year.
I am a runner. We are runners. And so I will run.
