How "Bread" Gave Me Hope For the Human Race
It did involve bread, yes. In fact, it involved an entire road of bread. As I was heading home from an appointment this morning I came to a stop light and this is what I saw...
Initially I thought it was funny. This was in the midst of morning rush hour (around 9am) and as you can see on the right hand side of this picture there is a biker that happens to be getting off his bike.
He was actually pinning his bike to a post so he could go and collect the "full load" of bread, which appears to have fallen out of the back of a bread truck.
Then something AMAZING happened.
The person in the vehicle behind me got out of their vehicle. I quickly followed suit. And people started flooding into the middle of the street (7 or so people) to clean up this bread and put it off to the side of the road.
Even though the light had gone green, most of the people from the 3 cars behind me (in both lanes) were in the middle of the street helping. Not a single person honked even though it was rush hour. Not a single person!
In a matter of a minute or so we did a pretty good clean up (considering the oncoming traffic kept turning left). Check it out...
This gave me a lot of hope. Although we are surrounded by negative news and negative media and even sometimes negative people on a day to day basis, there are still a lot of wonderful and altruistic people out there in the world.
It all started with a biker, and then the engine built steam. In a matter of seconds many people made a split second decision to help...to help for the sake of bread and of course a clean road.
This made my day, my week, and shed a little light on the fact that it is OK to give people the benefit of the doubt. Most people are stand-up, wonderful individuals if you give them a moment and a place to do so. :)
Whoever thought a load of bread in the middle of the road could have such a profound impact on me!
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Really amazing! Although there are people with this kind of attitude everywhere, I do believe it's related to their culture and education. You canadians are (at least we all hear a lot) very polite and honest people.
Believe me, here in Brazil, most people in most places would probably pick the breads up for themselves, kick them or just run over as nothing had happened. And what about the rush hour? Lots of fingers pointed to a possible helper, honks and unkind words.
Anyway, congratulations to them!
p.s. Did I just see Eleanor on the second pic or is an impression?
For the most part, I do like to believe that Canadians are nice and common-sensical people and I think that this would happen again if the timing was different, but by no means 100% of the time.
Culture and attitude I do think play a big role and viewing others as equals, showing compassion and empathy towards others, and using a bit of "perspective" are the starting points for stuff like this happening.
Definetely, it was an admirable gesture, even not seeing this sort of attitude with a lot of frequence, is always a pleasure being present at the moment.
It was a lttle meaningless attitude for some, but for me, and I'm pretty sure most here, shows a lot of character of those who did such thing.
Fantastic, the ripple effect seems to have made its way all the way to Singapore.
I smile broadly reading this story Kyle. I agree with the BAD situation in fact I stopped watching the news on TV a few years ago. A girlfriends 5 year old daughter asked when was the 'bad news' coming on. Now I read the paper on line.
It is good to see that there are good people still the world who pull together when they need to, to get things done.
Nice 'bread' story Kyle, great pics too!
Gai
:)
When kids growing up knowing they are watching then news for "bad news" and getting excited about it, it becomes a problem. I don't think that we all have to "watch the accident" so to speak to be fulfilled on a daily basis and we would all benefit from thinking, reading and watching things that had a much more positive impact on us.
Thanks for your feedback Gai!
Wow! I just saw this post right after I was thinking about how much better I felt for the rest of the day from a random act of kindness by my coworker. I had come in late and was having a really bad morning when she decided to bring me coffee and banana and strawberry on a stick. This enlightened my view of the rest of the world somehow. Talk about serendipity :)
Nothing like a nice surprise in the morning. I am not sure if this is a case of serendipity or whether it is a case of "realization". Either way, it is wonderful to see that there is a lot of hope that generally speaking, people are kind, thoughtful and willing to work together.
I LOVE serendipity..
I saw the end result of that this morning and noticed a large box of bread on the side of the road. Nice work Kyle!
To make this story even better..
I was thinking that might have been a food bank truck, so me and my two boys ended up buying some bread and took it to the local food bank this afternoon.
So the profound impact was merely a pebble in the pond as it will be rippled to other people.
I have two quotes written in my home, one above my front door:
"Find the Wonderful in Today.."
and the other on my whiteboard:
"Never look down on someone unless you're helping them up.."
Today's bread event made me realize that others may have the same quotes lingering around them.. Hooray for the human race!
Wow, that is amazing. The fact that you saw this and the fact that you ended up letting bread have such a profound impact on your day (and your boys day as well). That is a really awesome and unbelievable addition to this story.
Perhaps that ripple from a mere pebble is continuing on as we speak? Pure awesome ness!
It is amazing what effect you can have on others by simply doing something good. What a great way this story ties together and involving your boys too Jay awesome.
Most of us are good people too bad the news are focused on all the bad things going on in the world...
Anyway, great job guys.
Just when I thought this blog could not get any more cool, then we have Jay, Soren & Callan in the mix. We've talked about that great quote on your whiteboard, but I also really enjoy that nice quote above your door at the crib. I've said it before because its true, Jay ROCKS.
I know I'm feeling better just reading about it. Perhaps there is a way to make this event grow like the pay it forward movement. One can hope and take action to promote this sort of thing whenever possible.
Had a nice read here. I had some subjects before about journalism and sad to say, "bad news is a news." I agree though that there are actually many good people out there. Your experience about that bread shows that many good hearted individuals still exist.
And bad news is what people tend to enjoy sharing. I make an attempt to share a few positive stories each and every day to try to break this cycle and do my part to help change the way act as a society. If everyone did this, perhaps positive news would become popular news.
Its strange how little things can get action generated almost without thought. I would like to think that's our true nature showing through. Thanks for sharing the story:)
I believe it is 100% our nature, but we have been sculpted to behave differently (primarily by the media). Hopefully at some point in the near future there can be less polarization of ideas and personalities and a bit more unity.
I love these kind of stories. In my FB account I am subscribed to 2 sites that always post things like this from all over the world. It does give us a warm feeling to know that there are people who would take care of a problem that they didn't create. (loaves of bread in road that could have caused a few accidents) By the way, with the prices of bread these days I hope you tossed a couple of good loaves in the backseat! lol Thanks for the post Kyle.
I was going for the hamburger buns but that had already been run over!
You said it well, taking care of a problem you didn't create but it problem that could have been created for others. If we left this bread in the middle of the road, ever person that drove by would have slowed down, tried to avoid the "big" loaves, and in fact it could have served as enough of a distraction to cause an accidents.
It was a day of "people awesomeness", I just hope that I can learn something from this and that everyone involved is able to pay this sort of ideology forward (and maybe even the folks reading this).
It sure warms the heart really to see people pulling together. When it seems everything on the news and in the media is negative an incident like this comes a long and gives us renewed hope in humanity.
Yeah, I think it proves that only negative news is good news. Hopefully I can have more things like this to share throughout the year.
I am no better than the next person, our typical reaction when we see something like this is to think of it as someone else's problem, but collectively we can make a difference and it usually only takes a single person (in this case the biker) to initiate it.
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Great story kyle
Glad you liked it sir! ;)