Last
night was bitch night.
My
boyfriend, my roommate, my friend and I decided to take a break from our lives
and sit by the pool and basically bitch about everything that made us sad or
angry. Somehow Madison and I got on the subject of the corruption in the
education and court system and had one of those “makes me lose faith in
humanity moments.” (If you worked for the courts, you would lose faith pretty
fast too.)
But I
was driving from a staff meeting at the mall today and saw something amazing.
See, the underpass near the university is renowned for having some of the
shittiest lighting in the world. When I pulled up to a stop to go under the
over pass, I was about three cars behind the light. A little old woman, wearing
a freaking babushka I kid you not, was standing at the crosswalk with her bags,
looking very confused. See, she couldn’t actually see the sign that was telling
her to go ahead and walk from where she was standing because the walk sign
isn’t in the obvious place.
The
guy in the first car behind the light noticed this. He put his car in park, got
out and walked over to her. They spoke
briefly before he took her arm and started to walk her across the street.
While he was walking her, the light changed, meaning that technically we were
supposed to go. Not a single car moved. Not the car in the other lane, not the
cars behind me or beside me. No one honked or pulled a face or rolled down
their windows or flipped anyone off. We all just sat there and appreciated this
man who had taken time out of his busy day to help this woman.
The
light turned again, meaning we all officially skipped a cycle of the light and
were sitting at a red again. No one seemed to mind though. The woman thanked
the man, he got back in his car and when the light turned, we all went on our merry way.
And
it occurred to me then that humanity deserves more credit than it gets. Yeah,
shit happens. Gay people get beat up and aren’t allowed to marry in thirty
eight states. Children get sent home from school in tears because of bullies
and teachers who are bullies. People get fired for innocuous reasons, leaving
families without paychecks. Little kids have cancer, illness and injury despite
our best efforts to protect them. The world is full of shit, shitty people and
shitty days.
But so much good goes unnoticed. No one
would know about that old woman and the man who helped her or the cars that
waited patiently behind him instead of honking. So much good in the world gets
overrun by the shit we have to deal with, shit we deem more important than
everything else we do.
We
lose faith in humanity so easily. Every time a bomb goes off, a shooter takes a
life or twenty, every time a country goes to war or falls to famine, every time
the NRA opens its fucking mouth. But these are the times that humanity needs
our faith the most. These are the days when the world needs our love and
support, not our skepticism, not our fear, not our anger. I’m not saying we
shouldn’t be angry or upset, but never lose faith. Never stop believing that
the good is still out there.
Never let anyone take away your hope.
Today
I have a bunch of friends graduating. I am so proud of them for getting through
school, through all the shit life threw at them. And I am so happy that they
still have the dreams, hopes and belief to keep working, to keep going. To be
teachers, engineers, ethical business men and women, doctors, nurses and
artists.
Someone
once told me that the world is wounded. We can’t think of ourselves as Band-Aids.
We are clotting the wound, not covering it up. It is our strength together, our
faith in this world that will heal it. We are already helping more than you can
know.
Challenge
to my Readers:
Never
lose faith in humanity. Never give up. Tell the NRA to shove it up theirs. Look
for the good, look for the love, look for the opportunity to hope and provide
hope. Treat every person, every moment, as though they are important.
