Awesome Human Alert
BLOG POST: Why AWESOME HUMAN ALERTS?
A while back, I decided I was beyond done with the negativity, fear-provocation, and filth-slinging on social media. But I was also well-aware that social media is forefront in reaching one’s clients these days, so cutting it off completely wasn’t really an option for me. As I was pondering how to handle this apparent dilemma, the words of The Secret popped back into my mind: Focus on what you DO want; not what you don’t want. With those words resounding in my head, I set off to come up with a way to use social media for good.
The result? AWESOME HUMAN ALERTS!! What’s an AWESOME HUMAN ALERT, you ask? On the surface level, it’s a posting/sharing of stories about humans (or sometimes animals) doing amazing, loving, kind actions toward their peers. I’ve shared stories of teens rescuing an elderly woman from a house fire, opposing team members huddling around an opponent as she fixes her hijab, a priest bringing stray dogs into church so people would adopt them, and the stories go on and on. How cool is that???!! THE STORIES GO ON AND ON! So it is not that there’s no humane humans out there; it’s that their stories weren’t being told nearly as much as the negative ones were being told. Time to rectify that! Time to talk about the mama who rigged up a device so her son with cerebral palsy could skateboard, the young woman in skirt and heels who perfectly kicked a plastic bottle back in the passing car window from which it had been thrown, the farmers who showed up to harvest their neighbor’s crops after he was injured by a bull, the woman who crochets 300 plastic bags each into sleeping mats for homeless people, and the list goes on and on. THE LIST GOES ON AND ON!
Below the surface level of just sharing the stories, it’s about renewing people’s faith in humankind. How can you not feel a renewed sense of belief in humanity when you hear about the math prof who taught his class while holding the infant of a student who couldn’t get a sitter, the father and sons who cut 80 truckloads of wood and delivered it free to people in need, the young kids who sleuthed their way to finding a missing 97-year-old woman with dementia, the Home Depot folks who fashioned a walker out of PVC for a child whose insurance company wouldn’t buy him one, the tourist who picked up all the trash on a foreign coastline “because it was dirty”.
And beyond just renewing our faith in humankind, it expands our view of kindness to the animal kingdom as well. Now some will accuse me of anthropomorphizing when I share about the possum pulling ticks off a deer’s face, the dog and the cat laying together feeding their babies, the ostrich who snuggles orphaned elephants, but I don’t care. To me, kindness is kindness no matter the species and, as a species, we certainly need more examples of kindness right now!
So, to that end, let me tell you about the ENTIRE graduating class of 2019 who remained quiet so their classmate with autism could receive his diploma in silence since noise overwhelmed him, let me talk about the young fast-food worker who bought a homeless man lunch with his own money AND the women who witnessed his kindness and rewarded him with $100, let’s share about the people who’ve taken to paying off the lunch debts of poor kids so they get a warm meal every school day…because, in the end, what’s going to matter? Our alleged differences? Or transcending those differences and sharing love and kindness with others…