What's Going Right?

At my college newspaper, one very talented features writer wrote an in-depth story about an undergraduate girl who successfully fought off bone cancer - but who as a result had a metal rod in her leg to support her ravaged leg bone. She's also an insulin dependent diabetic. One day, walking to class, that rod broke. Spontaneously. She underwent surgery, and a lot of pain followed by a ton of hard work in physical therapy.

The girl went back to class, and the dorms, and continued living life as a student at the University of Washington.

Few people on campus knew what she had been through. She didn't advertise it. This girl was one of 35,000 undergraduates walking around - and who any of us may have passed in the quad, or sat next to at a lecture.

That's what made the feature so great. Besides the fantastic writing, the story was touching, it was real - and it was about someone in our community. Someone we might have overlooked, but someone worthy of admiration.

We published that story ten years ago - and I think about it often still. Whenever I see TV news and even newspapers, I see the tragedies, the calamities, the stories that make me feel I'm watching or reading a police blotter. A man gets shot downtown when he's carjacked. A fire on a hill. People snowed in or iced in to their homes. Robbery at an ATM. A baby someone threw in a garbage dumpster. All the horrors and human tragedy of urban life.

Some of it affects me. Some of it doesn't. Some of it feels a lot like rubber-necking to see the accident on the freeway. It's tragic, and sad - but (not to be callous) the desire to see it is really some kind of morbid curiosity about an incident which is none of my business.

What I don't see are the stories about what's going on in my community. I know nothing about my neighbors. I don't know about the charity, the activism, the interactions, the personal tragedies, the heroic enterprises, the heartaches or the joys.

I know someone whose husband earns a very nice living. He's about to lose his job. They recently had a baby. She's been at home with their four month old, not working. She's took the year off to spend with her baby. Shortly, he'll be laid off and they will have no income. They saved an entire year of her salary last year - never spent a dime of it. They're going to be okay despite this troubling economic time.

Despite the great lessons to learn - and the real human drama - I'll probably never see a feature on that on the news or in a paper.

But I will hear features on the people who lost their jobs and are suffering. I should hear about them. But I want to know about how some people escaped tragedy - what they did - and how I can do it too.

Instead of just hearing about random acts of violence, I want to hear about how a group of people are making a for-profit business of providing an office space and shared facility concept to non-profits dedicated to sustainable development. A friend of mine is involved in a successful new business that does this. Isn't that fascinating that even in hard times, some people are profiting at dedicating their lives and work to a social and environmental cause?

I want desperately to hear about why Thailand's new government is facing crowds of protesters in the streets - just weeks after protesters from their own party were rioting against the previous government - of the opposing party. Why is one of the most peaceful countries on Earth in political and social turmoil? Is Thailand on the verge of real democracy, or just being torn apart? Or both? I have to go online for news from Singapore's news station to find out.

My best friend's sister has three young sons. She lives in a very safe neighborhood. She watches them ride their bikes down the street to their friends' house. I asked her why. She watches the news. She's heard the horror stories. The world isn't safe. She could list three stories in communities far and wide of horrible things that happened to unsuspecting children.

You can't fault a mom for wanting to know her children are safe. But you have to wonder if things are really any different than they were in the 1950's when people let their children roam the neighborhood, or do we just have the horrible stuff that was kept quiet before, broadcast to us now?

Our view of the world is undeniably shaped by our media. Perhaps today as much or more than ever. Are we getting the whole story?

Sometimes, when I walk my dog, shop for my groceries or drive to work, I wonder who among the people around me might have a metal rod in her leg and has lived her life in an inspiring way - and why don't I know about it?

Comments

[Observer Z]

Tell you the truth - I feel better not knowing at least some of the stuff a round me. There's already a flood of information ever since the internet has taken off.

We strive to be happy. That's our main goal in life, no matter how noble and caring you see yourself. As I see it, knowing more than we already do would just add more stress to our already stressful lives.

That said, there's information that enriches us and contributes to us and there's information that doesn't. We need to know the good from the bad, and it's not an easy task as it is.

I try not to know everything there is to know, but rather, what I really need to know, that contributes to my goals in life.

And of course, for some people, knowing is the goal itself.

[JCP]

Here's my view from the East Coast of the U.S.: I lived in Southern California from 4th grade through high school and during that time, I did not know the neighbors on either side of my house and after many years, I only knew a handful of families on my street.

One family had the habit of pulling their car into the garage and then closing the garage door once within the house; never parking in the driveway.

I didn't realize how strange it was not to know my neighbors until I moved back East and went to college. Now, I live in Maryland and not only know all my neighbors, but they are socialable. Of course, we are not all friends, but we know each other's names and a little bit about each other.

I recall visiting my grandfather in New Jersey years ago and being struck by something about the houses on his street: They had front porches. I never saw a porch, I don't think, in Agoura or elsewhere in Southern California. A porch's purpose, best I can tell, is to promote community. You sit on your porch and face in at your neighborhood. You gather with your family members on a porch and talk or watch television and when people walk by (another phenomenon that does not happen much in Los Angeles), you see them; maybe you even wave and say hello.

Of course I am painting things with a broad brush and I am sure there are very social neighborhoods in Southern California, but perhaps there is something behind this parochial observation of mine.

The point I am slowly circulating around is that I agree with much that is written above, especially about our lack of knowledge about the people closest (in distance) to us on a daily basis. What I find is missing all too often is community formed and created by small interactions over a period of time, occassionally even sharing moments of great happiness or sorrow.

While we have opened ourselves up to relationships that span the globe, we also have surrendered somewhat the local connections that tethered us to our community, our town, our street.

We will chat to complete strangers online, but are reluctant to knock on our neighbor's front door with a homecooked meal.

[Eric]

So true. Community - and it's disappearance in America is a huge thing. One of the many contributing factors to my ever gnawing fantasy of moving to Southern France is that the French still have community.

You walk through the neighborhoods and streets of your town while buying groceries, meat, bread, pastries, clothes, etc. People sit outside local cafes. In the course of conducting daily life transactions, people rub up against one another.

That's common in Europe, but so rare here.

But porches... I thought they were just the gateways to killing Hamlet's father... :)

And thanks for reading, Cyril.