What else would I have done?
These words were spoken by Kassim, a fellow customer in a fish and chips shop in Oxford, England, where my daughter lives. It was twilight of a wintry day, and Kassim had just gotten off work, and we were waiting for our takeaway orders, when a young man wandered in, looking fearful and disoriented. He was a visiting student from China, had gotten on the wrong bus, and was completely lost. He spoke almost no English, his phone was dead, and he had only a vague postal code address written on a slip of paper. “I’m lost,” he said. “Can someone get me Uber? Can someone help me home?”
Kassim immediately stepped up. He deciphered the young man’s address, a student residence on the other side of town, offered money (not needed), ran out to a taxi on the street that declined the gig, arranged for an Uber pick-up, then stood by until the Chinese student was safely on his way. His unhesitant gallantry lifted my spirits and restored my faith in humanity. I told him so. “What else would I have done?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact way, as if kindness and decency were the norms.
Why aren’t they? I’ve been perplexed lately by how readily so many people have become comfortable with cruelty. And I cannot understand how anyone would accept leadership that is at war with civil society … all the while amassing staggering wealth for itself. It doesn’t make sense.
“We have responsibilities for others,” wrote the late historian and essayist Tony Judt, “not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas, and possibilities for which we, in turn owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander these.”
Our country is flawed and unfinished, but its ideals and aspirations hard-won and worthy, and we will not abandon these. I know this because I hold the values and hopes bequeathed to me by an Italian immigrant grandfather who arrived at Ellis Island in 1905 at the age of 17. And because my Jewish ancestors fled from persecution in Russia. And my father and uncle were soldiers in a brutal war to end totalitarian aggression. And I have lived a life of blessings here and learned it’s not okay to ignore the suffering of others.
I have been documenting for the future how it feels to be alive in these strange times. Frankly, it is exhausting, and sometimes we wonder how we were going to get through. There is a moment in each day when we reach the cusp of tears. Clouds of doubt and worry cast their shadows, and we search within ourselves to find the light in our brokenness, and we also pray, each in our own way, and somehow find what we can do and keep on going.
This moment in history is forcing us to take stock of what matters, and to let go of what does not. I have a sense of free-falling lately, and I don’t know whether it’s scary or liberating. We haul around the great weight of responsibility and love, and this beautiful and terrible world glints and shines in all its mystery and wonder. Hope is a shape shifter, sometimes shimmering, sometimes shadowed by the hard realities it contains, but we cling to it, and we have found it is resilient, and outrageous — and with action, it yields fruit.
This is a human statement, not a political one. This is an expression of alarm and hope and compassion and loyalty to our fundamental values. I am not red and I am not blue. I’m a window, crystal clear, and here’s my heart jutting out and my soul in pieces. Sometimes I don’t know which is more powerful, my sorrow or my anger. But I’m a chapel too, as are you, and all my candles are ablaze.
And I know we will prevail because I see the decency and compassion in my fellow humans every day. I have witnessed breathtaking generosity, remarkable courage, and the ripple effects of even the tiniest gestures. I see food being collected for hungry neighbors and songs being written and young people being tutored and guided along bewildering paths. I see helping hands extended to strangers, fledgling activists doing what they can, and communities gathered in purpose and love, and I feel the light and strength of that.
We work together because we care about our neighbors, and because truth matters, and because we believe in kindness and decency and the aspirations and freedoms which our forebears struggled — and even died — to attain and gifted to us with a duty to continue. This has not changed.
Look into your history and recall the brave souls who crossed borders and fought wars and struggled all their lives to bequeath this moment to us. No, we will not squander it.
This is our time. History will judge us. We know right from wrong and truth from lies, we know who we are, and we will stand strong and be true to what is decent and right.
What else would we have done?
