8/20 - Thursday Thoughts

I'm a bit behind.  But really I have written posts for the past couple of days in my head -- it's just the whole getting them down business that has been slightly off. WORK and LIFE!  Ok?  Ok.  Moving on...

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Thursday morning I came across this article in my Facebook feed:

"This quick-thinking teen cleverly befriended a woman's kidnapper to save her"

and I'm so happy I did.  I generally enjoy Upworthy posts, though I don't click into every one that passes by on my screen.  Occasionally they seem to go in waves where they post sensationalist, click-bait titles, which turns me off from finding out more, even though I know their material is always uplifting.  But I stopped and clicked for this one.

What an incredible young man.  He sensed something was wrong in the situation he came across and he took action.  I can't say that I would have done the same thing, or that most people would have done the same thing.  Granted, he felt relatively safe enough to involve himself in the situation, which I probably would not have - and it is always important to maintain your own safety in order to be most effective in helping others - but my broader point is that he involved himself at all.

I finished the article remembering the little motto "If you see something, say something."  How much does it take for us just to say something - a "How are you?"  "Is everything okay?"  It really, really doesn't take anything at all.  And you never know the impact you will make.

Earlier this week, I was presented with my own opportunity where I saw and sensed something wrong and could have said something, and I didn't.  I should have.  Luckily (though also unfortunately, for it involved someone being injured), I was given the chance to respond to the situation again just a few minutes later.  But if I had said something the first time, when I sensed that something was wrong, perhaps things could have gotten taken care of that much sooner.

For the record, everything turned out okay. But in the first moments, my sense of something being wrong triggered two reactions in me.  The first one was to ask if everything was ok.  The second, however, was concern for my well-being in a possibly odd situation, and I used that as an excuse to justify my way out of it.  "Oh well I've got to go into work."  "I'm by myself and this is weird."  ... and so on.  This Thursday article, though, inspires me to perhaps follow up with that first instinct a little bit more often because, in most cases, it will be just fine to simply ask if everything is ok.