"It shouldn't take extraordinary acts"

Yesterday, as I was returning home from a quick walk around the block with my dog, I saw a boy standing at the edge of the sidewalk, looking across the road. I veered to the opposite side of the concrete path to put some distance between me and him. We smiled at each other. Then the boy went back to staring across the road. I followed his gaze. There, on the other side, was a girl about his age. The pair were both somewhere between 7 and 10.

Then I saw the guy in the middle of the road. He was kneeling in this thin divider, like another mini-sidewalk of concrete, which runs down the middle of this somewhat busy road, separating the two lanes. (Of course, the street was far less busy than usual.)

The man had a camera, and he shouted at the two kids: “Okay, go ahead!”

The entire time, I had kept walking, so I couldn’t make out exactly what they said when the dad shouted “action!” But the girl asked how the boy was doing, and the boy said something involving the phrase social distancing. Then the two gave each other an air-five from across the street. They must have been 30 feet apart.

It was heartwarming — a moment of creativity and generosity from a dad and his two kids. I can picture this going online and teaching other kids the importance of staying home and staying apart at this time.

“I love this. I’m so Team Human,” a voice in my head said.

Then another voice crept in.

“Ugh. They shouldn’t be the ones to say this to others.”

I hear this a lot, not just from the random voices in my head. (We’re all friends up there. Except Larry. Freakin’ Larry…) The refrain goes something like this:

“It shouldn’t take the extraordinary acts of citizens. It shouldn’t require the creativity of everyday people. The system should take care of this. The system should solve it.”

Two thoughts in reply:

1) Progress almost always requires extraordinary acts. It’s the “extra” that sits on top of the “ordinary” that allows us to evolve beyond the ordinary in the first place. Creativity from everyday people — people who raise their hands to lead — that is how innovation happens. That’s how change happens. That’s how movements happen.

It always starts with small pockets of people who raise their hands and say, yanno, I know it’s not my job, it’s not my usual, it’s not my title … but I will do this. The system is failing. The ordinary won’t cut it anymore. Follow me.

We might wish it didn’t require this, but it always does.

2) Another way to frame this: This is actually how the system solves its problems. After all, those of us who look at the system and decide it’s broken and decide to act are part of the system. We live in this society. We are therefore part of it. So maybe the system’s immune system comes in the form of courageous and creative individuals acting as antibodies — rogue agents, small in number compared to the whole, but capable of healing it just the same.

We can lament the fact that the “system” should fix a problem, or we can decide that rage-tweeting and panic-reading is counterproductive. Better to stop waiting and start acting. Grab your cameras, or your tool of choice, and do your part. Become that “extra” we need to go beyond the ordinary.

Because ordinary just won’t do it.

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