Like many of the people who will read this article and like many other college students today, I am very easily distracted. So easily, that when I have an article due at 5 pm Saturday and have 5 other good ideas, I end up writing one about how I get distracted. Distracted easily enough to where I frequently enlist a website designed to avoid me from getting distracted when studying.
Anyway, getting distracted can sometimes lead to unfortunate results, as I'm sure a few of my previous exam scores can attest to. Yet, it's pretty easy to underrate how valuable distractions can be. The world can be just as cruel as it is great from time to time and when that happens, we all have ways of trying to put those things aside and keep living our lives.
I have a wide variety of things I do, whether it be hanging out with friends, listening to music, watching or playing sports or generally just doing something stupid (one could argue over the validity of the last one, but it's a distraction nonetheless).
Sometimes, distractions are just what the world needs. Whenever bad things happen, we look and try to find some outlet to take our minds off of them. This week is one of those times.
In Charlotte this week, another black man - Keith Lamont Scott - was shot dead unnecessarily, leading to protests and riots in North Carolina and throughout the nation. It's the third time this has happened this week and it certainly won't be the last time it happens in America. Whether or not you agree with the Black Lives Matter movement and the issues it takes on, it'd be ignorant to claim that there isn't a problem and that it is isn't depressing, aggravating, frustrating or any other adjective related to having a bad time.
During the reactionary protests, the NFL came out during the week and said that despite the protests, the Carolina Panthers home game this week will be played. As anybody in New England can tell you, the NFL isn't exactly a model of institutional objectivity or fairness, nor has it's previous decision making in the last decade exactly been on point from a public relations standpoint.
Yet, in this case, they've got it right.
Living in Boston for the last two years, I wasn't here for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, but everyone across the nation understood the magnitude of what happened that day. It was a scary world to be living in, and one that made people fear of what was going on around them. That situation isn't exactly comparable to what happened in Charlotte this week, but the fear present in both places, and the corresponding reactions, mirror one another.
Then this happened:
Of course, if you know sports, the Red Sox won that day, then won the World Series and doing it in Boston for the first time in almost 100 years. That made a lot of people happy and as a sports fan myself, it's easy to look at this in the vacuum of sports and not look at the greater value of that championship.
Did the Red Sox winning the world series make the world a better place? Not at all, the bombing still happened, and the impact was the same. Yet, in a time of social unrest, Boston needed a distraction to bring it together, something to get behind, something to take it's mind off the fear present in their minds.
The Red Sox gave it to them back in 2013, and, hopefully, on Sunday, the Panthers can give it to the people of Charlotte. The world won't be better because a game of football was played. The unrest will still be present, the issue of unnecessary violence towards African Americans will still be present, and hopefully, this issue continues to prove one that cannot be ignored.
Yet, for those three or so hours in Charlotte on Sunday, I hope all people, white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, can put everything aside for a second and come together. I hope that they can be happy, and put aside the fear and the anger present and just be people. It happened here in 2013, and it happened in New York after 9/11:
Hopefully, it can happen this Sunday in North Carolina, and a city can begin to heal.
