For the past year, the country, and particularly New York City, has been in a ‘catastrophe’ state of mind. The City has been blanketed with an outpouring of love, kindness, empathy , goodness and mercy, an aggregate such as I have never seen in all the years I have lived in this city. It was almost palpable, this patchwork quilt of emotions, and for a brief while there were no strangers in our city, just people who had never met. There was an almost comic ritual of you go first no you go first wherever people lined up for service, albeit the supermarket, the subway toll booth or even the bus. This had become the best of all possible worlds, and the more cynical among us just waited for the other shoe to drop. After all, in a city where congestion is the rule and not the exception, where crossing a street can be life threatening either from the vehicles or from the bicyclists who invent their own traffic laws, where the simplest chores become hurry up and wait, a heavenly emissary would be hard pressed to maintain a state of equanimity, let alone a loving mind and attitude.

So here we are and what has happened to that outpouring of love for our fellow beings? We suffer from the usual human weaknesses - such as forgetfulness - and we go back to business as usual. We mouth the words of the terrible catastrophe and the suffering and the loss and we reach for the platitudinous life must go on and that’s as it should be. But, and but is the operative word, we must avail ourselves of this serendipitous opportunity to be more than we were before the world seemingly fell in on - if not us – many of our fellow New Yorkers.

I see these opportunities and I see how they fall by the wayside. What can I do, you ask, I can’t change the world. Wrong. You can change it bit by bit and that’s really the best way; overthrow is not what we want. Let’s look at something as simple as the New York City buses. For many New Yorkers this is the primary mode of transportation, and for almost every New Yorker who jumps on the bus there is another New Yorker who approaches the steps into the bus as if scaling Mount Everest. Every day I observe the lazy and the selfish usurping the front facing seats which are reserved for the elderly and the handicapped. In actual practice, those who fall into that category seldom fall into those seats unless the wrongful occupants can be shamed into relinquishing their prizes. This is just one example. How about all those homeless people who use the sidewalk for a bed and adjacent steps as a pillow? What of the children of homeless families who are transported at 3 or 4 in the morning contingent on when a space becomes available? These families need our assistance, and have needed it long before acts of terrorism elicited an outpouring of help to families of the victims. The victims of the attack did not want to be there any more than the homeless families want to be on the street, but in both instances the circumstances are beyond everyone’s control and we need to tell our elected officials that anyone in New York who is a victim, needs help. For those who want to be more hands on, there are many sick and elderly persons who existed long before the acts of terrorism and who would be happy to have a visit from a friendly resident. We zealously pay homage to those who have perished but we can only offer them our thoughts; it is the living who require our help. Think of your children and their expectations as the holidays approach, then think of other children who have learned not to expect and think that you have the power to change that. We have given of our time and energy to honor the firemen and policemen of this city and that is as it should be, but now we should allocate some of that time and energy to our fellow citizens, in awareness that we are our brothers’ keepers.

There are those who will scoff at my next suggestion as just too corny, but each day we could all look for a way to do some simple act of kindness. Why do we have to enter into a state of catastrophe before we look around and see if we can contribute to the common good in some way? In my mind I keep remembering the following words from the Bible, Proverbs 14: 23. “Righteousness exalteth a nation”. What better reason and time does any of us need?