The Exception Or The Rule?

This weekend, my husband and I were invited to speak to a group of transplant clinic nurses as part of a panel on the Paired Exchange kidney donation program.  We were there to shed light on our experience with a fairly new program so the caregivers would have a better understanding and would be able to guide their patients and potential donors with their decision.  Of course, we have nothing but praise for the program, the team, and all of the people involved so we were happy to take part.

Our panel consisted of my husband and myself, our donor, and two other donors we hadn’t previously met.   We each told our story and answered a few questions about our experiences and the reasons behind our decisions.  The audience showered us with praise and thanked us for what we did “because not many people would”.  With this, I have to disagree.  We are not the exception, we are the rule.

OK, maybe everyone wouldn’t hand over a vital organ, but I do believe with every fiber of my being that most people are good.  Most people are caring.  Most people are generous and kind.  Most people are willing to help others.  Given the opportunity, most people will go out of their way to reach a hand out to a fellow human being in need.

I’m not sure I’ve always recognized this.  We think of children as naïve, innocent and trusting and expect that to change with age.  We see people becoming more jaded and cynical and downright grumpy.  Disappointments and pain can do that to a person and I think that’s normal.  But perhaps I am the Benjamin Buttons of emotional growth because I am becoming more trusting and Pollyanna with each passing year.

In my youth, I complained plenty.  I waited for the other shoe to drop and I saw my glass as half empty.  Now, as a happy, openly loving half-full grown up, I see that my younger self was only jaded on the surface.  Because while that girl declared that her glass was half empty, in her heart she trusted that she HAD a glass and that there was something in it. 

When I look at my life in review, I can’t recall a single time of need that didn’t include another human being helping me.  During family road trips, if we ended up on the side of the road (often), someone pulled over to help us.  When I rode a skateboard into a friend’s fishtank and ran towards home with badly bleeding knees, it was a neighborhood teen boy (and aren’t they supposed to be the most selfish?) who dropped his precious motorcycle on the concrete to scoop me up and carry me the rest of the way.   Any time I have ever been lost, someone has found me.  No matter how dire my situation, I have never been alone.  I have never been truly stranded or left to suffer because someone has always been there to reach out a hand.  Often that hand was attached to the arm of a stranger.

That, I think, is the rule.  People are kind, people are loving, people *want* to do the right thing and will if given the opportunity.  I haven’t rewritten my history.  Those bad days happened.  But I see them with refreshed eyes.  I no longer focus on the cloud so I’m able to see the sun peeking out behind it.  For every bad thing that has happened, a human being stepped in to make it better or easier.

When we turn on the news, how many of us hang on the terrible event instead of the rays of sunshine behind it?  This is earth and human beings are flawed.  People will continue to do horrible things.  People will continue to be caught up in some of those horrible things. That’s reality.   But MORE people will continue to do beautiful things.  MORE people will continue to reach out and offer help where they can.  When there is news footage of some tragedy, all attention is on the one screwed-up person wreaking havoc.  Why do we forget to see the hundreds of people who are doing the right thing in the background?  That one horrible thing is the EXCEPTION.  All those people doing good in the background is the RULE. 

Recently, our attention has been turned to the exception.  I’d encourage everyone to look beyond that and see the every day examples of the rule at play all around us.  Instead of measuring the contents of your glass, be grateful to have a glass and trust that it will be filled.  Expect people to do the right thing and trust that they will.  Look away from the tragedy and turn the focus to the humanity.  Isn’t that why we’re all here in the first place?