Why So Much Evil?

Mimmi Montgomery Staff Writer

There is something significant about days when great disasters happen. Regardless if the disaster was caused by terrorists crashing airplanes into skyscrapers, or mother nature sweeping people off shore in a gigantic wave, we all seem to remember where we were that moment when the disaster oc- curred. It is as if time stopped.

A few days ago, on April 15, I remember where I was when CNN announced breaking news. I was sitting by a computer, slightly annoyed at my brother who sat next to me, for some nonsense that makes no sense now. The news channel revealed that bombs had exploded by the Boston Marathon finish line, leaving three people dead and more than a hundred injured. “An- other act of terrorism” was my first thought, and suddenly, I stopped being annoyed. Life is certainly fragile.

The bombs went off in Boston, not very far from New York, during a public event. It could very well have been the New York Marathon, which by the way takes place close to where I live, (God forbid that I will ever cheer in the crowd this coming fall).

But, no matter where in the world an act of terrorism occurs, it is just as horrible. It stops time, because the world is full of reasonable people that cannot figure out how someone could commit a crime of this kind. The majority of us are incapable of understanding what goes through a person’s head when they intentionally take someone else’s life. Somewhere, that person crossed a line that is impossible for the rest of us to get over.

The person that kills someone is not only robbing the world from a human being and all of that person’s thoughts, memories, experiences and unique contributions. That person also deprives someone of a mother, father, sibling, best friend, colleague or love. It will break hearts forever, create incurable emptiness, and leave life-long wounds.

One can also question why we should live through so many disasters? In 23 years (minus a couple of baby ones where I was not really “in the know” of what went on in the world), I have worried anxiously for a friend and her family that were in London during the summer that the Al Qaeda bombed the subway. A neighbor of mine returned home alone on the airplane at the age of ten after losing his whole family in the tsunami in Thailand, 2004. Two years ago, the largest mall in Scandinavia, located close to my apartment in Sweden, was put under bomb threat (luckily only a threat). Who knows what could happen if a cer- tain young dictator soon starts playing with his nuclear toys.

It hurts that there are a bunch of nutcases existing in a world that could be so brilliant, filled with citizens striving for peace, happiness and mutual understanding. It probably hurts even more that these cases are hard to get rid of. If every known murderer and terrorist would be put behind bars, would not new murderers and terrorists emerge? Is there really enough room for only kind people? It appears that the world needs a slice of bad to compensate for all the good, and that stinks.

One would wish that intelligently phrased words would be enough to change these people’s minds, but so far, time and history have proved that they form a species that seem almost impossible to extinct.

Just keep in mind that life is fragile.