For Every Act of Cruelty in These Times, Thousands of Acts Of Kindness Go Unnoticed
Were you astounded to read of the man in Holly, Michigan, who wiped his nose on the shirt of a dollar store security guard who told him to wear a mask?
Or of murder of the guard in another town over the attempt to get the perp to put a covering on his face?
Or the Connecticut Walmart store whose window was smashed by another mask refusenik?
“What is the world coming to?,” you must have thought.
But then you read of the good folks in Ireland who have raised a treasure for the people in the Navajo and Hopi nations who are dying from COVID-19 and are in desperate need of everything from personal protection equipment to food, safe drinking water and testing.
The Irish – who have never met the American indigenous people in the Southwest – have a long memory and recalled the incredible generosity of Choctaws who raised funds for the starving Irish during the Potato Famine of the mid-1800s.
More than a million poor Irish folk starved to death during the scourge that afflicted the Emerald Isle from 1845 to 1852, and another million joined the diaspora from their homeland for years following.
The Choctaws themselves had suffered a forced resettlement from their home east of the Mississippi in the 1830s, but they read of the Irish calamity just over a decade later and raised today’s equivalent of more than $5000 to send to the suffering thousands of miles away.
The Irish never forgot that gift and “paid it forward” in this time of disaster. And you need not be reminded that for every act of cruelty and selfishness making the headlines today, there are 10,000 cases where people are going out of their way to comfort and care for those who are frightened and isolated.
A meal left on the doorstep, a run to the pharmacy for a sick neighbor, even a call just to let friends know they are not alone.
And in case you did not read about this extraordinary act of bravery, let me refer you to the April 20 piece by Zach Helfand in the New Yorker entitled “The First Face You See at a South Bronx Hospital,” which will break your heart.
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