Nineteen

Just like everyone else, I'm watching the manhunt for the 2nd Boston bombing suspect unfold. It has finally sunk in that this guy is 19 years old. NINETEEN years old. Who, at 19, has so much anger toward a country that they go through the effort to plan and execute a bombing at a world-renown event? This is not to mention the aftermath of it: the running and playing hide-and-seek, and the willingness to die, defending his cause. He's still a teenager. He's barely a legal adult. He's a college student. How can one really have so much hate against a world he hardly knows?
I'm a bad example of what 19-year-olds should be worrying about. At 19, I was planning a wedding. I hardly knew myself, let alone how to be a wife.
At 19, you should be focused on college, making new friends, learning how to survive in a working world, eating Ramen noodles 5 nights a week, rushing home on weekends to ask your mom to do your laundry, figuring out relationships....all the things it takes to emerge into adulthood. Who knows enough about anything to even develop the desire to end other humans' lives for the sake of some extremist principle?
In a way, I feel sorry for the young man who thought there were no other alternatives. It is sad that he will never know the opportunities this country could have allowed him. It is sad that death and injury resulted from his actions. However, the notion that building bombs and killing complete strangers -- adults and children -- who have nothing to do with him is completely idiotic. Violence of any type never solves anything, nor does it ever get any point across. I just cannot fathom the type of passion it takes to want to kill innocent people....especially at 19 years old.
My heart goes out to the families of the victims of this absolutely senseless act. I don't know if you'll ever find peace in this, but I hope you are able to continue to live moving forward.