On All Sides

Don’t look now, but we’re surrounded.

No, not by thugs and henchmen, like the heroes of a Batman story.

Not by the Decorations of Christmas Yet to Come, a prospect more terrifying than any ghost Dickens ever invented.

Not even by wild-eyed Mary Shelley fans – though with October marking the 200th anniversary of “Frankenstein,” that’s a closer guess than most.

No, when you live in Chez Rochat as I do, and you’ve just entered the month of October, there’s a surrounding horde more intimidating than all the rest on the way.

Birthdays.

You laugh. But it’s true. When Heather and I first joined forces 20 years ago, little did we realize that among the “for better and for worse” and “in sickness and in health” was an unwritten clause stating “And you shall spend October cornering the market on gift bags and Hallmark cards, and surrounded by ever-increasing Facebook reminders, til exhaustion shall you part.”

October is the month of our ward Missy, who would gladly celebrate each day of it with bowling and dancing (along with every other month, of course). It’s also the month of a grown sister, a young nephew, a frequently-visited aunt. It even holds the day for a much-loved grandma who left us at 93 and a much-loved cousin who left us at 21 … both of them sharing the same birthday.

Surrounded, I tell you.

Every family’s got some sort of similar coincidence, I’m sure. (Before I married Heather, February was usually the typical Rochat Family Danger Zone.) And when you think about it, it’s a rather benign mob. Besides serving as a dress rehearsal for the Christmas logistics that are oh-so-near, it’s a reminder that the ones we love are never far away, that family is nearer than we think.

It’s a reminder we could use these days. On a much larger scale.

True, this country has never quite been the Hands Across America, From Sea to Shining Sea that we like to celebrate in our national legends. Our nation began in a family fight and has found ways to stir up more – figuratively or literally – with each succeeding generation convinced that they’ve been caught up in the worst of it. Civil war. Depression-era strife. Riots and protests. The arrival of Hanson and Justin Bieber.

But without trying to rank it on some mythical internet scale (“You’ll Never Guess Where YOU Rank on the Nation’s Seven Most Strained Moments!”), it’s fair to say that we live in particularly divisive times. Many are hurt, suspicious, angry. And to be fair, many of the events in our headlines are things that SHOULD make us angry, many of them the very questions of justice and compassion whose answers define who we are as a people.

But in the midst of it, we can’t lose sight of something important.

Namely, each other.

When “who is my enemy?” becomes more important than “who is my neighbor?”, we lose.

When politics becomes a blood sport and a tool for revenge rather than a process for arguing our way to answers (sometimes, admittedly, with great rancor), we lose.

When we harden our hearts and block our ears … when we put our pride above another’s pain … when the team justifies any action taken in its name … we lose.

And every time we do, we become isolated in the midst of multitudes. Seemingly many, yet so alone.

We cannot neglect our larger family.

I’m not saying to roll over and surrender in the name of unity, like someone trying to placate an abusive partner. Some fights need to be fought, some stands need to be taken. But if the battle of the moment obscures why it’s being fought, who it’s being fought for, then even victory becomes hollow.

We must see each other as more than “other.” And act like it.

Don’t look now, but we’re surrounded.

By family? By foes?

That’s up to us.

In the Mirror

I know I’m at the end of a very long line, but I still have to say it. Thank you, Charles Ramsey.

In case you missed it – and if you did, where were you? – Ramsey is the Cleveland man who helped rescue three women that had been held prisoner by his neighbor for a decade. As he was eating lunch next door, he heard one of the women screaming for help, ran to see what was happening and, with another neighbor’s help,  broke in a door to find and free the ladies.

That alone was sure to put him in every headline in America. But it was his humility afterward that lit up the Internet from Honolulu to Bangor, Maine. No, not a hero, he said. No, he didn’t need a reward; give it to the victims.

“I got a job anyway,” Ramsey told Anderson Cooper. “Just went and picked it up, paycheck.”

That sealed it.

It’s strange, the way we can hold someone we’ve never met to our hearts. Sometimes it’s for incredible nerve under fire, like Captain “Sully” Sullenberger safely landing a crippled airliner on the Hudson River. Sometimes it’s for endurance in an impossible situation, like the miners in Chile three years ago. Once in a while, the sentiment gets betrayed and turns to outrage – remember “Balloon Boy?”

But the warmest reception of all may go to the ones like Ramsey. Ordinary people who, for a moment, did the right thing.

The ones who could have been us.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: we have a strange turn of mind when it comes to the very good and the very bad. The actions of a Mother Teresa or an Adolf Hitler exist on a scale that boggles our minds: “I could never be that,” many of us say, with either awe or relief.

It’s not true, of course. They, too, were human, however much we might want to deny it in the case of a certain Austrian. Their actions could be another’s actions, given will and opportunity; as John Lennon put it, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”

But with someone like Mr. Ramsey, it’s just a little easier to believe.

Maybe we can’t see ourselves ministering to the poor of Calcutta. But we can see ourselves startled out of an ordinary day, called over to help a neighbor. It’s the sort of thing many of us have done many a time under far less dramatic circumstances.

And if those circumstances suddenly became extraordinary – well, most of us know we’ll never be Rambo or James Bond. But a neighbor in need doesn’t need James Bond. They need you.

Simple actions, kindly taken. They make all the difference in the world.

It can be argued endlessly whether you can call that kind of thing “heroism.” Frankly, the debate doesn’t really matter. The right thing is the right thing, regardless of the label; a helping hand is what it is.

It doesn’t take a hero. Just a heart.

And when we see something like the Ramsey rescue, it lifts us all up for a little bit. Yes. I could do that. That could be me.

It’s not a bad reminder to have.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight – welcome home. You’ve been through hell; may your trials from this point on be lighter.

Charles Ramsey – thank you. For being a neighbor. For being a friend. For reminding the rest of us that the right thing is always in reach.

That’s a reward worth remembering.