Rising to the occasion.

Hello blog fans! More apologies for my lack of postings. Those of you who actually know me know that things are a bit tumultuous at the moment, so not too much time for blogging, but I'm trying.

Today I'd like to point you to a news story. This story at the Boston Herald gives the lowdown.

I think there need to be more stories like this. In a time where what we hear the most in the media is mud-slinging and violence (politicians trash each other, Rosie and the Donald can't shut up, war, gang violence, road rage and so on), we need to be reminded that side-by-side with people doing wrong or stupid things are people doing incredibly brave and selfless things.

Most of us live our lives everyday as decent, good people. We feel compassion and give to charities and take pride in doing a good job and help our friends and love our families and show our pets affection and fight the urge to call the cops when our neighbors play annoying, loud Tejano music out loudspeakers into their backyards (that last one may just be me). We're not gang members or mob hitmen or even a-holes looking for a way to sue any big corporation we can find.

But sometimes, people are challenged in a split-second moment to do more than just not be bad - they're challenged to do something extraordinary. There's a moment, when someone else is in danger, and you can help, and it may put you in danger to do so, and no one would blame you if your instinct for self-preservation caused you to jump away from the danger...but you don't. You wade in. You put yourself in harm's way to help someone else.

If it's your child or your spouse or someone else you love, then another instinct takes over - one to protect what is precious to you. But when it's someone you don't know, or you know but don't have a personal investment in, that's hero stuff. It really is. That man that jumped on the subway tracks to help the guy who had fallen in the path of the coming train. This guy who positioned his truck in the path of the semi to save the trooper from being hit.

Yeah, it was that guy's job to be a buffer, but I would imagine that the people who came up with that job pictured a sedan running into the back of the truck - not a driver having to make a choice to position himself in front of a runaway semi. He made a conscious choice to do that - to put himself in harm's way to save someone else. Yes, it was his job. Firefighters and policemen and soldiers and the like all choose to spend their days facing danger to help others. But somehow, it's even better when it's not someone trained to be brave - it's just someone who in the heat of the moment makes the choice to be.

I think it's really important to hear about it when people do that, because too often what we hear about is the destructive choices people make - the ones to murder, rape, deface property, steal or even just avoid taking responsibility for things they've done. When someone steps up, we should applaud. Maybe if we did a better job of saying, "This is what people *can* be," instead of making excuses for all the bad things people do, more people would make the choice to be something positive instead of something negative.