Tags
365, deep thoughts, Fire, life
Returning home from work yesterday, I noticed a column of smoke up the road. It was a distinctive color, the color that tells you a genuine fire is going and something of substance is burning. As I got closer to home, I could see that a condo complex up the road had some pretty good flames going. The nice thing about the neighborhood is its proximity to a fire station, so the situation was quickly brought under control.
At the neighborhood Starbucks, several folks were commenting about how glad they were that it wasn’t their home. Now I can understand the sentiment, but as I think about it, I see more problems in that statement. Sure there’s relief that your home and possessions are safe. But what about the next step, reaching out to those impacted? So very often I see people pass by the scene of an accident, or ignore someone on a street corner. When I ask folks why they go past the answers range from, “I couldn’t help, I’m not trained” to “it’s not my job to help”.
Not everyone is trained to offer high level medical care or major emotional support to someone in need. Yet we all have some human compassion and understanding. The desire to find an expert for everything means that we forget that simple kindness needs no fancy license or certification. There’s a lot of talk about the way people aren’t as polite or compassionate as they used to be. Correcting that starts with a simple act of kindness. It doesn’t have to be big. Rather than thinking, thank goodness it’s not me, ask yourself how can I help this person.
Making that switch is one of the ways to make the world a little bit better.
I recall reading in several places studies that indicate that you are more likely to get help if there are few people around than you are if there are many. It seems that in the larger crowds there’s more of a tendency to ‘otherize’ people and more of a tendency to expect that someone else will take the responsibility. I suppose that’s one of the downfalls of larger ‘communities,’ namely that the actual sense of community diminishes as the number of people increases.
It’s true. I spent several years as an emergency medical technician. As a result, I developed a mindset of “I’m that someone.” Someone will call 911? I’m someone, I need to call. It’s a very specific, conditioned response that’s not common to my peers. One way that large communities have worked around this is through the small communities in large areas. Neighborhoods are a good example. These smaller sub communities provided a sense of group responsibility in a larger environment. In a day and age where we struggle to stay truly connected, it’ hard to find a way to replicate that sense of group responsibility.