Shortly after my husband and I moved to our little ranch in a spring over twenty years ago, we realized we didn’t have enough good hay for our two horses. We had no experience or savvy as ranch owners. We’d brought our horses from a stable that was expensive but handled problems such as food while we shoveled manure for 57 horses to pay our rent. Now that we were independent, we would have to stuff bales of hay into our Toyota station wagon once we located some place to buy them out of season. (An old Toyota station wagon could hold three squished bales, in case you’re interested.) Distant neighbors we didn’t know somehow heard of our difficulty and showed up with enough hay to tide us over until the first cutting would be available for purchase—no charge. They had more than they needed.
Years later, a passing motorist saved the life of our horse that was cast or caught in a fence in a pasture out of our eyesight. The horse would have died from stress if we hadn’t noticed him absent until bedtime.
As disasters seem to increase across the world, so do stories of courage and kindness. People have an urge to help when they don’t overwhelm it with negative nonsense. We’re meant to share, to cooperate. Now my husband provides free wood to our wood-burning neighbors from the dead trees he cuts from our property to mitigate fire danger. He doesn’t ask them to describe their history or belief systems. He knows only that we can’t tolerate smoke, so we burn gas to warm our house. One senior neighbor used to deliver free wood to local widows from the trees he cut to sell until he was too frail to continue.
Why do we humans—and many intelligent animals, as well–have a natural urge to help? Because early in time, we learned we could survive best when we lived in groups. We could depend on others who were more inventive or clever to provide fresh ideas of how to improve life. We were stronger and smarter together. We faltered when strong personalities convinced us we had to obey their instructions to succeed. Our personal insecurity led us to be vulnerable to manipulation. Current research has established that we’re emotionally dependent on one another for our mental health. Often the people who have come up with the best ideas are people we hadn’t appreciated—women, LGBTQ, minorities of every ilk, so-called nerds who had borne the brunt of cruel jokes. We haven’t always honored the people and cultures whose discoveries we used to sustain us in peace and war. We’ve made certain individuals into victims. Cynicism and bitterness attack us in reverse, even when we’re the ones who initiated the distress. Our blood holds the poison we’re sending out. Some of us are finally learning the lesson. Some of us aren’t there yet.
We choose who we are, regardless of an environment that may try to taint us with hate. The greatest moral leaders understood and included outcasts among their followers. In fact, kindness is a dependable way of sorting positive movements from the destructive. We choose what type of world we hold in a bubble around us, and those choices are contagious. The traditions that sorted according to wealth or power haven’t provided a sustainable, comfortable world. By numbers alone, we can change those priorities. This is our world, when we realize it.
