The front page of the Sunday Monitor was an example – even in this digital, virtual age – of how we as human beings still depend upon one another.
Reporter Ella Nilsen wrote about the unimaginable challenge of one area family watching their daughter fall into a coma from a brain tumor. Molly Banzhoff passed away this weekend, but not before she and her family received an outpouring of love from those in the Concord community.
And Ray Duckler wrote about random acts of kindness, and the lives of three women in the Concord area. The acts were small – a few dollars here and there to help pay for groceries and meals – but their significance in the lives of these people was great.
Stories like those written by Nilsen and Duckler can be set aside in a news cycle and media environment that focuses on the flashy and faddish. They are not about the grand, exhausting matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. They are not about past, present and future Kardashians. They aren’t about one or the other impending apocalypses prophesized by the left or the right.
No, they are the warp and woof of our lives, woven every day by us and those around us. Our bonds, the connections we make with family, friends and a community, give this world – and the worlds beyond – meaning and purpose.
We don’t just appreciate them, though. We depend on them to give us perspective.
For there isn’t only joy, but also profound pain behind many of these stories. The inconceivable sadness of losing a child has touched the Banzhoff-Higgins family, as well as Paulette LaRamee, one of the recipients of a random act of kindness. Economic distress has permeated too many lives in this post-recession landscape. Addictions sap people’s strength and chain them to a treadmill of dependency.
So many are struggling.
So many feel as though those struggles aren’t paying off. Anxiety, fear and distress have wound themselves around lives like so many creeping vines, feeding off the cold darkness of our modern age.
It can be natural during times like this to withdraw, to keep ourselves distant from those around us. It’s to the credit of our community that so many resist that tendency.
Connections were made and goodness exchanged, in some cases anonymously. It’s not necessary to know someone’s given name to share in common humanity and to ward off that darkness.
As a news organization, the Monitor spends a great amount of time and resources pursuing stories about unusual events. Sometimes, it may seem to focus on the worst of people – the murderers, the rapists, the criminals. But they are not all, or even most, of us.
On Sunday, we showed you something else, something quieter, and something that’s worth remembering.
Our shared humanity.