In Tune with Our Better Selves

The Boston Herald

They make the most compelling photos. A firefighter rushing into a burning building. A passer-by pulling a stranger from a hissing car. An unidentified someone risking life and limb to rescue a cat from a tree or a dog from a patch of ice. There was Officer Russell Cera crawling across a half-frozen river in Racine, Wisc., Tuesday, and the breadth of his effort was so clear that the photograph made national news. We eat up these snapshots of heroes in our midst. Didn't we all believe and imagine, until a feeding pond came up empty, that a Bridgewater farmer had risked his life to save a cow? And didn't we understand and respect this instinct?

Why is it, I wonder, that under the worst of circumstances, human beings rise to the occasion and give their best? Are we programmed for this? Is it in our nature? On Sept. 11,2001, lower Manhattan was full of heroes. In the biggest catastrophe of our time, hundreds gave their lives for strangers.

This was instinct, people showing that they cared.

They've cared throughout history. In the catacombs. In the Underground Railroad. In the Resistance.

People continue to care. And they show it a million ways, maybe not dramatically. But the caring is there. Gov. Mitt Romney and Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey care enough to give up their salaries to work for the state. It isn't heroic but it's noble. Kim Lauzier, a respiratory therapist, cared enough about one of her patients to give up Christmas Eve with her family to take him to his family. Channel 56 meteorologist Mike Wankum cared enough to fly three children, victims of Chernobyl, from Russia to Scituate for the holiday. Friends and family care so much that they put their needs second.

I watched a woman in church Sunday. She had a baby and it was as if her hands couldn't get enough of him. As he slept she kept straightening his blanket and when he stirred even a little she stroked his head. And when he opened his eyes she rocked him gently and he didn't murmur, not a bit. He looked around, then closed his eyes and the mother put him back in the carrier. And then she kept turning to check him, smiling all the time.

This is what we are capable of.

But we are also capable of the steel hardness and indifference that results in the abandonment of a child and a child's slow death. That's the other side of the coin.

Who taught the woman in New Jersey to torture children? Who inspired a man and a boy to kill human beings for sport? Who is responsible for terrorists who think it's God's will to take lives? What is it that continues to grow despots?

If, when a dog got trapped on the ice, we looked the other way. If we could drive by a car on fire and a person stuck inside. If on Sept. 11, the firefighters had run the other way. If there were no stories of men and women putting themselves at risk or second for someone else, we would be doomed. But we are not because we continue to do good.

Symphony orchestras are what give me hope. In a world where we have a new worry every week - Ricin only the most recent - orchestras are proof that people can work together not just in a crisis or in a rescue effort, but to create something beautiful. Orchestras are the result of talent, cooperation, leadership and infinite possibility.

All those instruments on their own would be cacophony. All those sounds would be noise if they were played without regard for the other. But they work together. They cooperate. That's the trick. They play, they pause, they mix.

And sweet music happens.