Charles Dickens Was Right

Charles Dickens was right when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

These past few weeks have shown us the very worst of what human beings can become. We saw how two men sought to create massive destruction and cause multiple deaths by placing bombs in the midst of crowds of people watching runners compete. Their timing was such that they didn’t even seek to destroy the most successful of the competitors, but rather set their bombs to go off when there would be the densest number of runners crossing the finish line and the most supporters cheering them on.

We have seen garment factory workers forced to return to work in a building where cracks had been found. That building collapsed and so far 1,043 people have died. These workers were being paid the equivalent of 18 cents an hour to produce six shirts.

In Cleveland we have found that three women have been held prisoner for a decade while their captor led a perfectly “normal” life. They were confined, and raped repeatedly while the neighbors in the area had no idea that these heinous crimes were being committed under their noses.

These truly are the worst of times.

Despite the horror of the injured and dead at Boston, many survived. Common everyday heroes, rushed into the bomb blast area without care for themselves to aid the injured. Miraculously the bombs went off in the middle of huge crowds but most survived. The injured have shown courage beyond belief. A dance instructor has changed her lifelong love of dancing only slightly in the face of her loss of a foot. She will return to dancing and has already chosen the Viennese Waltz as the first dance she will do once she has a prosthetic foot.

In Bangladesh today a woman was found alive after eighteen days. There was no one involved in the rescue of the others who would have thought that anyone could have survived after all this time. Not only had they called off the rescue. Not only had they stopped trying to find the dead bodies in the rubble. They had started to level the site of the collapsed building for public safety. It was only after a bulldozer had moved some of the rubble in this process, that they workers were able to hear her cries for help. She survived, and a child has his mother back from the dead.

In Cleveland three women survived being kidnapped, raped, and imprisoned for a decade. They clung to the hope of escape in the face of unbelievable odds against them. Their courage to continue on with life is amazing.

The courage shown by the survivors in Boston and Bangladesh proves to the rest of us that there is always hope. The fortitude of the three women in Cleveland proves that we can endure and succeed even when everything has been thrown in our way.

These truly are the best of times.