Compassion and the week's events

Between shootings, contaminated mail, gas explosions, and another potential school shooting, this week has been full of scary, violent news.  However, I cannot be grateful enough for missing qualifying for the Boston marathon by 45 second.  45 seconds and I would have ran that race.  I didn't understand at the time why it happened...it had been a hard year and I thought that it would be a grand culmination to balance everything out, but it didn't.  I guess that there was a bigger plan amiss here.  So, I guess that this makes #180.

I am so grateful that the opposite of pain is pleasure (181), ugliness is beauty (182), hate is love (183), and bitterness is compassion (184).  For better or worse, Americans are becoming acclimated to tragedies and responding with a conditioned outpouring of thoughts, prayers, and cries for justice.  We are learning to cope with such a multitude of horrific events that as a nation we are forced to make the decision whether to get angry and stew or demonstrate compassion and love.  I learned this on such a personal level within the last year that I feel as if I understand on a very deep level that love, compassion, and forgiveness are hard.  However, it is only with the backdrop of each of these uncomfortable feelings that we truly appreciate the loveliness each of these kind things can be displayed.  We are a deeply divided nation at a time that seems to only rally around the agreement that violence should not occur on such a frequent and massive scale to innocent people.

I am not trying to gloss over the tragedies.  In fact, I have had personal struggles this week that have compounded the national tragedies.  However, when I feel like I evaded death, it is hard to have a bad week.

"Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment, we rise above ourselves."--Mason Cooley