I will start by admitting that I am not good at keeping up with the news. I enjoy reading novels, magazines and various things online (blogs, articles, facebook posts etc.) but I don't like to watch or read news stories.
The biggest reason for this is that I don't like sad stories, and generally... the news includes sad stories of people who got killed, or injured, people who died in war, or other various bad things that happen fairly often in this sinful world we live in.
This is not to say that I never know what is going on in the world. Blake reads news fairly often, and lets me know some of the headlines of the day (even when they are sad... even though I ask him not to :-P). Also, you would be surprised how much news you can learn just from facebook and blogs. If it is big enough, everyone is talking about it... so I hear about it too!
However, there is a category of news that I really enjoy reading and am happy when I stumble upon it: hero stories. The stories where someone steps out and does something great and changes another person's life in the process.
Today I ran across two hero stories (links at the bottom to learn about them from the news) and I felt they were worth sharing, they were that good.
Apparently there is something about huge cliffs that appeal to people as their preferred way to end their life. In Australia, there is a guy who lives really close to one of these cliffs, and using binoculars can actually see people on the cliff who are contemplating this end. If he sees this, he actually goes to the cliff and talks to them and invites the sorrowful stranger back to his house for tea. He admits that not everyone is open to this, and he has seen people reject his help and his offer... but many more are thankful to have someone who cares. With his quiet presence and willingness to be there for them, people walk away realizing that life is worth living.
There is a similar story of a guy in Japan who walks to a popular cliff twice a day in hopes of deterring people there from committing suicide.
Each of them has stopped over 100 suicides, and the Japanese guy goes a step farther and actually keeps in contact with each person he has rescued, still checking on them and showing them that someone cares.
What an amazing calling! I love that there are people out there who literally devote their life to helping strangers. I actually think that in some ways, knowing that it is a random stranger who wants to do this makes more of an impact than the organizations set up to do the same thing. If I knew that the person helping me was doing it because it was their job, I might not believe that they truly cared about me. A random person stopping to talk to me about how I am feeling is very different.
It also reminds me of my most haunting psychology class that I had in college- basically the class showed numerous examples of how we, as people, tend to think that someone else will take care of it (whatever it is), and sometimes that means that nobody does.
There is something called the bystander effect. Basically, if there are a couple of people who are witnesses or experiencing the same thing, we wait until someone else acts before we act. But since we are all waiting for someone else to react... nobody does. If, on the other hand, someone takes responsibility, and starts asking those around to help, everyone mobilizes and sees how they can help.
A tame example of this was done as an experiment: the people who were going to participate in this experiment thought they were waiting for it to begin (it actually took place during the "waiting" time.) Smoke started coming out from under the door of another room into the waiting room. If the participant was alone, they always alerted the scientists. If the participant was waiting with other people (people planted by the scientists to not do anything), then many times they did nothing.
The less tame examples included people getting seriously hurt or killed while others stood around doing nothing.
Ever since that class I have hoped that if a situation like that came up, I wouldn't be the one to do nothing. I will no longer assume that someone else will take care of it. I want to be like these guys who stop suicides all the time (not exactly like them, but just taking the power of one). We can't help everyone... but we can all help someone. Many people who attempt suicide have said that if someone even smiled at them, they might not have done it. So... smile! Reach out to people in need! (I am saying this to myself too). I think the world would be a better place if everyone took this attitude of looking out for people to help.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/14/world/main6580981.shtml
http://www.japanprobe.com/2008/10/31/man-saves-lives-at-japanese-suicide-cliff/
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