COLUMN: Don't give up on humanity just yet
I didn't hear about the attacks in Boston until nearly two hours after the bombs went off.
Later that night, I turned on CNN to follow what happened and to wrap my head around this whole thing.
As they showed the gruesome video footage of the powerful blast, there was one thing that I couldn't help thinking about:
Sept. 11, 2001.
I don't know why, but after seeing the videos from Boston, it reminded me so much of that infamous day. Unable to get that out of my head, I grabbed my laptop and typed "September 11 footage" into YouTube.
I watched as what appeared to be the start to a normal day suddenly turn tragic as a camera man interviewing a new member of the New York City Fire Department caught a glimpse of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center.
Reflecting on these two events, there are a lot of similarities that come to mind. Obviously, they were both acts of terror.
After watching both, one distinct thing stood out to me: In Boston, as soon as the bombs went off, dozens of people ran toward the explosion. Seconds after the bombs went off, police officers, event officials, military veterans and even civilians intentionally put themselves in harm's way for the sake of others.
For all they knew, there could have been another bomb waiting to claim their lives. That says something about the state of humanity, in my opinion.
There is no reasonable explanation for what happened on April 15. The only logical rationale is that there is evil in this world. There is evil in this country, and sometimes evil things happen to good people.
However, with every evil deed, there is always a good deed to trump it. While many newsrooms were focused on racial profiling and trying to be first to report the latest break in identifying a suspect, they forgot to mention a couple of things:
Runners, who just finished running 26.2 miles, continued to run to the nearest hospital to give blood, not to mention the countless civilians who joined them, the numerous Bostonians who opened their homes and businesses to those displaced and without clothing, food and shelter and the heaping amounts of people who donated blood, to the extent in which the Red Cross had to announce that they had a surplus of blood, were all things reporters neglected to mention.
There is always going to be evil in this world, but fortunately, there still is enough humanity in people like those listed above that tell me, "Don't give up just yet"
