As the nation mourns the loss of 26 innocent lives at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., the debate already has begun on how to prevent such carnage.
I’m not going to pretend to have the answers here.
But I do know we could all use an extra dose of kindness these days. No, it probably won’t ease the grief for heartbroken parents in Newtown, but it can help the rest of us do more than shake our heads at an unimaginable act of violence. It can help us see the good — and the selfless and compassionate and generous, those who give time they don’t have and money they could easily spend on themselves. And maybe we can celebrate by perpetuating their examples.
Rollins MBA students (in white T-shirts, left to right) Colin Myers, Rakhim Rakhimov, Maki Wiggins, Gina Oakes and Lauren Maxwell pose before making their appointed rounds. Photo by Carly Thurmanpose, Arnold Palmer Hospital.
On Friday, as we were still sifting fact from rumor in Newtown, a group of MBA students from Rollins College were donating new 1,100 new toys they’d collected to the young patients in Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital.
On Saturday, 200 people were spending a precious day off volunteering in Sanford to make sure thousands of Central Florida children would have a Christmas. The nonprofit Harvest Time International opened its doors, as it has each year for the past 14 years, for a free toy shop where impoverished parents could select gifts for their kids. The toys — about 10,000 of them, all new — were donated by individuals, corporations, churches, civic organizations, schools and families.
Early last week, as part of the Toys for Tots campaign run by the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Disney volunteers helped deliver more than 30,000 toys, games and books collected by company employees in just three weeks.
In late November, on a day set aside this year for charitable giving — Giving Tuesday — an anonymous family in Naples pledged to match all donations made to Give Kids The World, up to $10,000. Donors were encouraged to share the opportunity by writing a “2” on their hand (as in two times the donation) and sharing the picture on their Facebook or Twitter page. The result? In just 24 house, the charity for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families had $50,000 in donations pour in.
And in the month of November alone, Floridians from Pensacola to Miami adopted more than 500 children from the state’s child-welfare system. For kids who had been orphaned, abandoned, abused and neglected, it meant a fresh start at a forever familiy. Throughout the year, roughly 2,500 other adoptive parents have followed suit.
In fact, you don’t have to look too hard to see kindness and generosity surrounding us. Every day, doctors, dentists and nurses volunteer their time and considerable expertise to help patients who can’t afford health care. Every day, the record number of individuals who have joined AmeriCorps and other national service agencies do everything from helping farm workers to tutoring school kids to aiding survivors of fires, floods, hurricanes and blizzards. Heroes among us have gone to the most remote, hostile regions of the globe to help strangers — or stayed home to build houses and donate blood and bring meals to their neighbors.
No amount of good deeds will bring back the children who died in Newtown Friday, nor the adults gunned down while protecting them. But for the rest of us, what we choose to do with our grief will either compound the tragedy or honor those too-short lives.
