Beauty to Make You Cry

When are humans so beautiful that they make you cry? At Red Carpet appearances? No. At Fashion Week in New York? Probably not. Showing off their conspicuous consumption or a parade of inconceivably expensive technology? Not even close.

But children drowned in their beds at summer camp? Homes and families swept away or burned or lost to unexpected foreclosure and torn apart by prejudice? These are the disasters that can make your stomach clench—unless you’re among the very hardest of heart, lacking in sufficient empathy. These are times to reassess priorities such as profit and power. (Is profit really more precious than love and home and safety?) What feels uglier than those observers whose superficially sad expressions or publicity appearances at a tragic scene are obligatory—insincere in the extreme? Worse when they blame the victims. Who can ever forget our national president at the time tossing paper towels to people whose lives had been crushed by a hurricane?

Many of the stories that have emerged from global disasters are beautiful—people at their best, unselfish, caring. They inspire photographs that make us weep. Mexicans coming to help Texans after being labeled and treated as degenerate. Celebrities daring to be seen sans make-up as they try to help and donate huge amounts of their personal money or fundraise with their talents to help flood or fire victims. Ordinary people giving of themselves and their resources without tax breaks. Heroes risking their lives and often their independence to save others.

A reader once asked me what the theme of my four novels was. I shrugged and smiled. “They’re all different,” I told her flippantly, thinking of the plots and styles. Then, as I thought about the stories, I realized all of my books are essentially about connection, about how people need one another. I never meant to write any kind of theme, but connection is the inescapable theme of civilized life. It wrote itself. Even many animals seem to understand.

The simplest acts of reaching out to give someone a hand can create a sense of purpose and satisfaction. Perhaps that’s the reason behind these meager lives—for us to realize we’re all connected—stronger and happier together. Now what are we going to do about it when we don’t have a disaster to motivate us?