Real talk: reality is depressing.
Reality is your heavy handed relative who has forgotten social nuances with age and makes a room go still with discomfort. Reality is the credits rolling on a feel-good movie and the sensation of being pulled back to the real world. Reality is ugly and rude and indiscriminate with its methods.
As of this week, the Syrian White Helmet member who saved a "miracle baby" from a pile of bomb-collapsed rubble has died by the very thing he saved people from. This is reality.
But you know what else is reality? That same man worked 16 hours tirelessly to save an infant that others would have surely dismissed as dead. He successfully rescued the child, a feat met by exaltation, men heard crying in joy, "Allahu akbar."
" God is great."
The video is a chilling, heart-warming testament to the goodness that humanity can do despite the bombs humans also dropped on those innocent victims. It is a sign that the world is not lost yet.
Some might protest that Khaled Omar, the Syrian White Helmet rescuer, died anyway and his efforts were futile, but I don't think you could argue that with the child's family or the men around him praising God for an act of mercy that day. To the people Khaled Omar saved he was a beacon of hope, a sign that maybe the world was not as dark and awful as so many of us have come to see it.
And we, Americans, don't even live in a bomb-threatened war zone. We do not scramble for a meal in a shell of what once was a grocery store. Tears do not fill our eyes because a bomb took our a neighbor's home and not our own. We are very fortunate.
However, I do not seek to use this example as a means of negating others' suffering that may appear less difficult to outsiders. For some, survival is escaping a bomb shell to see another dawn and for others it's getting out of bed and taking their meds. Survival is different for all of us.
What I am saying is that we need to believe in the power of hope. Khaled Omar knew if he just tried maybe he could save that baby. The men behind him hoped and prayed as they watched their fellow rescuer work carefully. Hope. If human beings lose all but their hope things will be okay.
A year ago I was struggling to make end's meet. I worked a grimy job at a grocery store and pushed my sputtering car half an hour one way to work to give kids a reason to love their education. School work was grueling and the only thing keeping me upright was Starbucks and my medication. I thought I would be trapped in true poverty and hopelessness forever. After all, I'd been living in public housing for over a year.
Skip ahead to August 2016: I have two amazing internships, a rewarding work-study job, and I'm attending the college of my dreams. I worked hard, I spent nights worrying if I'd ever make it out, and I hoped for change.
Hope is the undeniable power of the human spirit. I don't care if you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, or atheist. Whether you're Buddhist, Sikh, or agnostic, hope is powerful. Hope gets that woman off the bridge. Hope gets your neighbor through every day. Hope helps your friend crawl out of bed to work 3 jobs. Hope helps a refugee survive another day in a settlement camp. Hope saves lives.
This isn't meant to be a hyper-positive post about how the world is kittens and marshmallows because it's not. This post is meant to remind you that bad things happen all the time. People die heroes. People live unharmed as monsters. But the world goes on and so should you. Giving up, in this world, is no option. Because the world can and will go on without you. Might as well make the damn best of it you can and help others see that along the way.
