Finish lines are joyful places.

I’ve stood near many. At road races, half marathons and marathons, cheering, chatting, waiting for family members to round that last corner. Just a couple weeks back we walked around near the end of a race course in Danbury and marveled at all that it stood for, this place where triumph, sweat and sheer will coalesce, where community is created.

I remember the first marathon I ever saw. We stood on a corner about 12-14 miles in. A jazzy pop band played on the sidewalk behind us.  Everywhere people lined the streets, block, after block, after block.  I’d seen New York festive but this was New York festive cubed.

I wasn’t prepared for all that I saw that day, all that grit, all that hope, the faces set with determination and the ones who laughed, the runners going by on prosthetic legs, in wheelchairs, the elite runners seemingly gliding past. And then the waves upon waves of people who had made some sort of pact with themselves that they were going to take six months or a year or plenty of years and see this monumental challenge through.

Certainly there were family and friends in those huge crowds watching but there were also thousands who had no personal stake in it at all. But they were there to say `Hoorah, look at what you are pulling off!’ `Here’s to you!’

Like all of us, the runners seized on an idea, a dream and they went after it, for hours and days and weeks. They ran for a sister or a father or mother. They ran to raise money or a cause. They ran to see if they could.

Invariably what I see at each race’s end is that people who had been dueling each other off and on for miles and miles reach over after and shake hands or pat the other’s back, or run off down the road to cool down together. 

I see people who got to that place they were trying for.   

I don't understand why someone would want to take such a place and try to destroy it; to harm people who are gathered simply to cheer on something that's good. But on Monday we also saw so many others who ran, against time, toward danger, to help.

So much was broken in Boston Monday but there was also something fundamental that couldn't be.