Love conquers all

23-year-old Alonzo Johnson, right, helps an elderly man who was afraid to ride the escalator by himself at a mall in June.

Submitted photo

Sometimes it seems as though we humans have nothing but hatred for one another.

On Saturday, Aug. 12, an evil act took the life of an innocent young woman in Charlottesville, Va. And in the days following, the national media was full of coverage of that act and the hateful ideology which spawned it.

The coverage took the tone that events like that are some kind of every day, nation-wide problem.

But that’s not the world I live in.

Those kinds of events are anomalies. They are aberrations.

On July 8, 80 strangers on a beach in Florida formed a human chain to save a family caught in the riptide.

On June 24, a crowd of strangers gathered together to catch a teenager who was dangling 25 feet in the air from an amusement park ride. She suffered no serious injuries.

On June 15, a 23-year-old black man with dreadlocks helped an 83-year-old white man down an escalator at the mall because the older man was too afraid to go down alone.

On April 29, a tornado in Texas put a pickup truck upside down in water. Several strangers jumped into action, despite the frequent lightning and swiftly moving water and saved everyone in the truck. Including a 2-year-old baby.

That is the world I live in. It’s a world where all kinds of folks do not hesitate to do the right thing, often putting themselves at risk to do so. A world where love conquers all.

Don’t get me wrong, evil of the sort which took place in Charlottesville needs to be denounced for what it is in the clearest and strongest possible terms.

But we need to be careful not to allow the echo-chamber of national media to cause us to over-correct and end up in the ditch on the other side.

I refuse to believe that hate is endemic to the United States. This fact is evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of acts of heroism and kindness which happen on a daily basis similar to the ones I’ve listed above, many of which never see any media attention. It is also proven by the dozens of “No Hate” rallies held across the U.S. the week following Charlottesville, which barely made a ripple in the national news.

So when you feel like you’re about to get lost in the darkness, remember the world ain’t all bad. And most importantly make sure to add a little light yourself with some random act of kindness.