Walking Dead

You sit at a stop light in the left lane with a car to the immediate right of you and two cars stacked behind you. The clouds slowly crawl across the sky, mirroring the pace that you crawl through your day. The driver of the vehicle to your immediate right stares off into the distance, likely thinking of something far more distant than what his eyes perceive. The car behind you rolls his window down, and you observe as he carries an angry telephone conversation regarding large amounts of money being owed to him. A young couple wait for the walk signal to herd them across the street . As it does, they walk, passing an elderly woman who walks by herself at a speed not much faster than a snail. She fumbles around four grocery bags and eventually drops them on the asphalt in the middle of the intersection. She once again gathers the groceries and slowly continues on her way.

You think to yourself "why has no one even once acknowledged this woman?" As the thought crosses your mind, it occurs to you that you still sit comfortably at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn green so that you can carry on living your mundane existence. 

It is estimated that 7.1 billion people occupy planet earth, the only known planet to support life. It is also estimated that in the existence of this planet, 108 billion people have lived in it, meaning that approximately 15% of the total population of earth is alive right now. You can almost consider, based on odds, that it is an extremely unique coincidence, borderline miraculous, that you sit at this stop light with these few individuals at this moment in time. But what's most astonishing about this particular moment that you all share is that, despite the odds of sharing any moment with any given conscious individual in your lifetime, not one person can step outside of their daily mold enough to assist an elderly woman in carrying her groceries down the street.

You scroll through Facebook or any given social media page and you mostly see the same things. People plastering the page with frustration towards people with opposing views, people sharing semi-funny memes about semi pertinent events, or people bickering back and fourth about extremely generic social matters that largely have no effect on any of their lives. It is an unlikely scenario to come across any good story. People talk about politicians, immigration, Bruce Jenner, his ugly female twin, etc., etc.

If you're lucky, you'll get 100 years on this earth. That's countless moments just like this one, and in all of those countless moments, how many times will you stop worrying about the evil in humanity long enough to help an elderly woman cross the street when she can't do it on her own? How many times did you create good? 

Not everyone is going to be the next Ghandi or Mother Teresa. Not everyone is going to feed the homeless, adopt a child or donate millions of dollars to starving children in Africa, it's just not realistic. That isn't, however, a valid excuse to not exercise common courtesy. Can we not find the time have good will towards others? Are we so numb to life that other people are no longer important? If the community is only as strong as its weakest members, how strong is your community? 

Maybe our community has lost touch completely. Maybe instead of seeing people, all we see are worn out faces. Maybe it isn't a community after all... Seems like it's time to stop worrying about science fictions portrayed of a zombie apocalypse, it's already here, and it isn't imaginary.

Even being one individual among 7 billion does not detract from your ability to help your fellow man. It's in each and every one of us to do the right thing at any moment, but quite often rather than doing the right thing or the wrong thing we do... nothing. How different is that from doing the wrong thing?