A Friend Indeed

What a wonderful thing it is when you feel that things couldn’t seem worse a soul (or more) comes from out of nowhere and at the last minute and miraculously snatches you from the jaws of perceived doom.  Many will never know this salvation.  Plenty call this sensation “God”; but I’d like to focus on the flesh and give adoration to a human man and his spirit.

   

Today more than ever we are so acutely aware of all the tragedies that are enveloping the world - war, famine, poverty, personal loss - and the list is longer than I care to write about here.  We are force fed with a language of fear through the media because that’s what sells and we are always seduced by what is wrong.  But tragedy has always been with us, and it won’t be going away as long as we’re around (a human condition).  Maybe it’s me.  We see the bad in the world through the camera and computer eye, and many of us withdraw and just carry on surrendering to the "I can’t make a difference” feeling and even feeling like we might be in as bad a position as the other folks we feel bad for.

   

I’m carrying on about this because a recent interaction and external experience got me thinking about the microscopic aspects of pitching in. We are bombarded with trouble these days it seems en masse by the light-lit screens that are in our faces most of the time.  But I think the things underneath are what I would like to bring attention to and try and beat down the doom and gloom that can be so easy to fall into these days.  Our great country (and world for that matter) is in dire need of a positive jolt of who we really are.  Humans are such a wonderful creature when they care about their brothers and sisters: a truly unstoppable force of good.  But so many of us give in to the ethic of helplessness bequeathed by the all-seeing eye of modernity because that’s what comes easy.

  

Trouble comes to us in mostly macroscopic ways today, and that’s why it can seem unconquerable at times. But this is a deceptive notion.  I just wrote an article profiling a man and his brilliant engineering ideas for a better way of life:  Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome lets us understand how science can create a beautiful shelter for people now and in the future.  I drive at this because the geodesic dome provides us with a metaphor for how we can each make a difference: Buckminster Fuller used small geometrical formations to construct a larger good that ultimately benefits a macroscopic group.  The secret is in the small components.

Tragedy comes to any of us in different ways.  But there’s no arguing that loss is loss.  Today I sit back in my humble dwelling and can easily deflect from the problems I have by empathiing with the misery of the people I see on the screen.  But recently, a friend of mine (after I told him I was having a hard time) immediately went to work helping me solve my problems.  Even though this person is dealing with a major personal tragedy on his own, he has been unwavering in his support.

      

Here’s the point and it’s nothing new: it’s the little things.  We make progress by thinking small at first so as to tackle a large problem.  When our compartmentalized thinking gets a better handle on things, we expand and progress, evolve.  But without the (sometimes unnoticed) small help from someone, miracles simply go undone.

  

My friend who could hardly manage to juggle the recent tragedies of his own life, when he was made aware of my troubles, he forgot all about his own and took mine on.  And I would do the same for him.

We don’t die. We multiply.