A Small Place For Nice Things

With the news out of Aurora this morning it’s hard not to feel out of sorts. This especially after a morning I spent researching mass murder for a scene in a book and then next thing I know there’s this news rolling in about dead people at a movie theater and gunshots and hurt kids and suddenly it’s a whole lot of bad feelings. Feelings that go toxic, septic, pretty fast.

On the other side of it, I saw something yesterday that was making me feel pretty good: there’s a local food stand that popped up within walking distance of the house. Nice little covered wagon with produce and some homemade jam and fresh-baked bread. Nobody there — just a cash box. The prices are all cheap, y’know, you can grab more potatoes than you’d need for a whole week and it won’t cost you more than two bucks for that giant basket of potatoes. And the people who put this farm stand up, they have a sign that says, “If you’re down on hard times, just take what you need, we understand.”

Which is pretty great.

And it leads me to this, and this is something I said on Twitter and Facebook this morning:

We balance out the horrors of a day like this by willfully doing good for others.

So, hug your kids, give to a charity, rescue a puppy, something, anything.

Evil can’t be undone, but good can outshine it.

So, if you feel like it, post something below in the comments that’s good and nice in this world. Don’t talk about the shooting or other bad shit. Don’t politicize anything (today is not a real good day to defend the second amendment, or talk about naughty pop culture or liberal-conservative fol-de-rol). Just post something nice. A story. Charity. Something your kid said or did. Anything at all.

This not in service of forgetting tragedy or ignoring it, but rather, to remind ourselves that people aren’t all bad and that one aberration a species does not make.

If you’re up for it, of course.