The heavy heart I felt last night lingers – this morning I started my 5 mile Tuesday run thinking of little else but the Boston tragedy. Honestly, I can’t imagine there’s a runner anywhere today who didn’t have the same experience. I dedicated my run to the victims, but somehow, it didn’t ease my mind as much as I thought it would.
This afternoon I received an email announcement from the race director of my upcoming run (it’s a marathon AND a half marathon race), acknowledging the Boston tragedy and offering assurance of and outlining security precautions for the event. While I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the message, the fact that it was even necessary saddened me further, and sent a slight chill up my spine. There is no doubt that the cloud of this tragedy will hang over the start, race course, and finish of this race.
Running is about joy, freedom, peace. All of the things that terrorism (regardless of where it originates; foreign, domestic, or any other sort) is not. So as I was running, I decided not to participate in the ugliness by letting the “bad guys win” and the sadness overwhelm me, nor further antagonize myself by playing an endless loop of negative messages in my brain. Perhaps most helpful of all – I haven’t viewed news coverage since last night. I believe in staying up-to-date, but the media takes it too far, makes it too sensationalized.
Instead, I decided to run for peace and kept my mind occupied with this:
P – Perseverance
E – Equality
A – Acceptance
C – Consideration
E – Enlightenment
Join me. You don’t even have to be a runner. You can walk for peace, sing for peace, dance for peace, jump rope for peace. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how we get there, only that we do.