This time during my freshman year, I missed two major things about Boston that weren’t related to my family or friends. The first was the image of Boston and Cambridge (where I live) along the Charles River; the second was getting off from school for Patriots’ Day.

Patriots’ Day — or Marathon Monday, as it’s more commonly called — might singlehandedly prove the existence of God, at least for Massachusetts citizens. Right after our wicked long winter has finally ended, Massachusetts gives a holiday that no one else in the country gets.

Every Patriots’ Day, the Red Sox always play a home game that starts at 11:05 a.m., and Major League Baseball has a recent history of scheduling the game against a West Coast team whose plays are essentially playing at 8:05 a.m. on their body clocks, an occurrence that is both cruel (from an objective perspective) and brilliant (from a Bostonian’s perspective). After the game is over, the fans usually file out of Fenway Park and into Copley Square just in time to catch the second and third waves of runners finishing the marathon. This year, the Red Sox won on a walk-off Mike Napoli double, and the fans migrated yet again to one of the best and most underrated atmospheres in sports.

While nearly every other sporting event in the country requires expensive tickets, an arm and a leg for parking and, seemingly, a background check from security just to attend the event, the Boston Marathon is completely different, especially for those from the city. As long as you have a Charlie Card to ride the T (our equivalent of the Metro) or a few lawn chairs to watch the Marathon from a more suburban part of the race, you can get right up to the course and cheer on the runners.

In an era in which people are clamoring for a million more warning labels on every piece of food that we eat, the Marathon is so lax in this regard that runners will take cups of water from altruistic strangers without ever thinking twice. Except for the final mile or two, there is barely any noticeable security around the course. Bostonians can hop out of bed, walk up to the course, and watch a world-famous event without any worries of bureaucracy, over-heightened security or danger of any kind getting in their way.

The Marathon is ours, and so is that atmosphere that comes with it.

Or, I should say, the atmosphere was ours.

After Monday, everything may have changed. In all likelihood, there will be no more bringing one’s kids right up to the course to let them watch, no more holding up cheesy signs to encourage the runners and no more suburban spectators watching the race from their lawns, views unobstructed. The heightened security that is sure to follow for future Boston Marathons is understandable, and maybe now it’s necessary, but that doesn’t mean it will have an overall positive effect.

The reason is that the atmosphere surrounding the Boston Marathon is everything. Heightened security may seem a small change, but if the feeling surrounding Marathon Monday changes from one of jubilation to one of fear, it could be incredibly detrimental.

At the center, though, what every mass murderer is trying to do is not ruin a state tradition but wound the emotional state of those left living.

All too often after events like these, the lingering trauma is the only theme of the story, when it should instead be merely a very important theme in a far greater narrative. Our media has a tendency to focus solely on the damage that killers do to a community, rather than focusing on the ways a community picks itself up.

It’d be remiss to do that in this case.

I have immense pride in my city, and I know it well enough to be confident its citizens will rally in much the same way as the Red Sox did against the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Part of the reason why Boston is so downright insane about its sports teams, I think, is because we want the success of our teams to reflect our overall attitude of strength and resilience as a city. Such an attitude will never be on more display than it will be in the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.

In the end, then, the only heartbreak that will have any staying power in Boston is Heartbreak Hill: No matter how long it takes, Boston’s marathon — and the city itself — will rise again, stronger than ever.

Tom Hoff is a sophomore in the McDonough School of Business. DOWN TO THE WIRE appears every Tuesday.