My place of employment (a military base) is a bit remote. The nearest town is 40 to 60 miles away (depending on where exactly you work), though a large number of employees live much farther than that (90 to 120 miles or more). Therefore, almost all the off-base people are in carpools or vanpools. It all works well, and helps keep the employees sane, but if one of the car/vanpool riders has to unexpectedly leave work early for some reason, transportation becomes an issue. There is no such thing as public transportation out here.

It is not unusual to receive an email sent to the maillist with a plea: “If anyone is going to Salt Lake” (or wherever) “I need a ride due to a family emergency.” I can’t think of a single time when that email is not followed, maybe 10 minutes later, with, “Thanks to all who responded. I have a ride.” It doesn’t matter the time of day, whether the work day is just getting started or almost ending. There are (I think) about 1500 employees who could be coming or going, but most people are on the same 7:00 to 5:30 schedule, so you wouldn’t expect someone to randomly be driving that 100 miles to Salt Lake just when you need to go. And yet, it always seems to work out.

This fascinates me. I’m fascinated at the goodness of people. That probably says something sad about me and my level of cynicism. I doubt that many people rearrange their schedules to drive someone into town (though that may sometimes happen – I admit I’ve done it before, but he was a friend, not just a random maillist person), so it is most often a matter of luck and convenience that someone is going where you are going when you need to go. But even if someone happens to be going to Salt Lake or wherever, it would be so easy for them to ignore the email and not deal with the inconvenience of having to drop a rider off, likely a ways away from wherever they were planning to go. And yet clearly many people respond. I like that.

There are certainly many cruel, thoughtless, hateful people in the world. However, I’m grateful that the good ones outnumber them. I hope that I am and always will be one of the kind people on the planet. Sometimes I need reminders not to be so wrapped up in my own life that I forget what little things I can do that may improve another’s life. We hear sometimes of the big things that people do that are hailed as so wonderful. That’s not bad, by any means. Yet it is the little things – like a ride somewhere when we are stuck – that often make this mortality a gentler realm for us all.