As much as you can fall in love with a city, I did so with Boston. During the two-plus years I lived there, it stole my heart. This city is a place full of promise, what with so many universities, so much youth, museums, music, research institutions, think tanks and a myriad of folks living their lives in very different ways. Yet even with such diversity, several things unite the city’s residents, like the ridiculous weather, confusing streets that confound all but the most experienced cab drivers, and the Boston Marathon.

The annual event has taken place in April, on Patriot’s Day since 1897. It attracts half a million people, including 27,000 runners. To accommodate this influx of visitors (and celebrate Patriot’s Day), the city shuts down. Most offices and schools close. Most everybody ventures out, at least for a short while, to cheer on those who are trying to make a dream come true. It is a special, joyful day. Ok, it’s also a chance for college students to get drunk and unleash some pre-exam stress. But even that has its charms.

For two years in a row, I stood alongside those drunken college students and cheered the runners on. I got goosebumps, teared up a little and vowed to continue to pursue my own dreams. I saw the lean, lithe, little Ethiopians and Kenyans at the head of the pack, the stragglers walking at the back, and everyone in between. How many stories there must be, I thought as I watched those bits of humanity pass by with all different gaits and gear.

Like everyone else, the bombings hit me hard yesterday. When I lived there, I ran those streets every week. I walked around that area frequently. I can still see those deep, russet-coloured cobblestoned making up the sidewalks. It is a beautiful, vibrant part of the downtown area. Hotels, shopping, office buildings and stately hotels are all in the vicinity. Tourists meander through the history-laden streets and suited people make their way to work. These scenes are accompanied by the screeching of the T (the underground subway) and the hard Boston accent. In winter, the smell the snow and hot dogs from the street vendors permeate the air. And the runners. That’s another thing about Boston: there is always someone running, any time of the day, at all hours, anywhere in the city.

The nature of such an attack is that it terrorizes free of discrimination. Every human is fair game. Attacks like this are thieves of security and predictability. The point is that they alter the boundaries and horizons of what we perceive to be possible. They exceed our collective imagination, despite the fact that this is not new.

We have experienced this before-witness the Olympic bombings in Israel and Atlanta. (And in contemporary news, the carnage around the world does not stop: 55 Iraqis were killed yesterday in Bagdhad, and this is just one story.) The result of terrorist attacks on the US seems to be that the nation’s psyche has indeed been altered. A recent study from the University of Maryland found that “Americans think more frequently about the possibility of a terrorist attack against the U.S. than they do about the much more likely prospect that they will fall victim to violent crime or be hospitalized.”

Despite this preoccupation lodged in the backs of people’s minds, the nature of terrorism is such that it is unpredictable, so citizens proceed with their lives regardless. In the minutes before the bombs erupted, how many people around the finish line were feeling fear and vulnerability? Twenty-seven thousand runners gathered in Boston to tackle the marathon because they devoted months of their lives to training. Hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the streets in support. This turnout is proof that people will always venture out into the world, vulnerable, fuelled by a will to live and a dream of accomplishing something. That’s what makes this seem so particularly cruel: Marathon Monday symbolizes an activity that captures the best of what the human spirit is capable of. Striving, achieving, failing and trying again.

Running is arguably an innocent, aspirational activity. Most people are capable of doing it, at least in some approximation. We don’t need to run, but we do so because we can. The Boston Marathon is the penultimate symbol of this aspiration. The result of this is a celebratory, and yes, again, I use the word innocent, mood. Yesterday, this mood was shattered and another layer of innocence peeled away.

Today, I am grateful my friends in Boston are safe, at least physically. My thoughts and prayers are with the city, where people are shaken, heartbroken and traumatized. It is time to rebuild and repair and restore our horizons.