31 Silver Linings – A Writing Challenge {Day 21}

It’s fortunate that difficulties and hard times bring people together.

No, that isn’t a typo.

We all go about our days, doing our “thing”, tending to our own needs and wants…and the needs and wants of our partners, kids, bosses, pets, parents, siblings; the list goes on and on.  We get caught up in the to do lists of life, and really, rightly so – there are many things that need tending in this life. But it is when it all falls apart, when it all hits the fan, that you see people step out of their own world’s and into one another’s.

We hear about tragedies each day on the nightly news.  It comes to us through our news feeds on Facebook and Twitter.  It’s discussed around dinner tables and water coolers.  But what is often the part of the story that sticks with us?  The tale of the person who stepped into the situation to help:  the man who removed his belt and staunched the bleeding of a person he’d never met after the Boston Marathon bombing; the man who walked into a burning building to rescue an elderly gentleman who lived there and could not get out.  It’s the men who band together to lift a car – a car! – off of a motorcyclist after an accident before the car blows up from a gas leak.

And we see it more acutely in our own lives and the lives of those around us.  The family that rallies when one of their own is suddenly in the hospital.  The neighbor who makes a meal for a widow a month after she’s lost her love and everyone else has gone back to their own lives.  The friend who comes and sits with the mother who mourns the loss of her child.

Of course we don’t wish any of these things on anyone.  We desire for ourselves and those we love comfort and peace, health and happy days.  But I take heart in the hope that comes through the hard times.