Were you a little scattered today?

It is the day after someone put bombs near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, timed to explode as ordinary people crossed the finish line, fulfilling dreams and promises. Their families and friends were waiting to cheer, not because they were the best at running, but because in some way crossing that finish line meant they were the best to someone.  It is the day after a little boy died waiting to be swept up in a hug as his dad crossed the finish line.

Did you find it harder than usual to concentrate today? Yesterday I was busy with work, on my computer but not on media.  I didn't know until I got into my car.  I hadn't heard the news.

Today I listened to part of an audio blog that argued that our job as business people and bloggers is to go on doing what we do.  Tragedy happens every minute to someone, somewhere.  They are all important and we cannot honour them all.  Boston is not my home. This is not my fight.

Today, my world was largely unchanged. I did what I do, and I wasn't afraid or furious or hurt.  It's just that I felt vaguely sick all day long and I cannot think about that father who didn't get to hug his kid. I cannot think about all those people, parents and kids and friends and runners.  And not thinking takes some mental energy.

What will we do now, you and me and all of us?  How will we integrate the images we have tried not to see? I will tell you.  We will integrate it because we have done it before. Because we still remember teachers hiding tiny children from a boy with a gun. Because we remember a beautiful young woman shot in the face, half a world away, because she believed in education for girls. Because our memories of sudden horror are bred into the bone.  We will pull the grief and horror in, and we will live around it.

We won't forget and some part of us will always feel a little sick when we remember. But we will allow our energy to flow around this stone of hurt and rage as though our lives were a stream, light playing along the surface of the water.

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