Look for the Helpers

I was looking over some of my old posts and I noticed that one of my posts in 2012 was called "Everything is Awesome". Yeah, I was saying that before it was cool.

Last week there was a lot of unawesome stuff happening in Pasadena. Four fatalities in a 24 hour period from a series of car accidents, fallings and shootings. From overheard conversations and on Facebook I heard several people say that things were getting bad around here and that they were going to move.

Seriously people? We remember the tragedies because they are so awful and because they are the headlines that we see in the papers and on television. The real story is that these tragedies are not common. Our society is moving in a positive direction where fatalities from car accidents are declining. Industrial accidents are declining. Murder-suicides are declining.

By focusing on the tragedies, we miss the bigger picture. In all cases, police and emergency personnel were on top of the situation. The neighborhood with the shooter was locked down and nobody else was hurt. Traffic...well, traffic was a mess but the police were there to manage the situation.

As the great man Mr. Rogers said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers--so many caring people in this world."