It's really easy for me to feel despair about the state of the world today. All around are examples of humankind's inhumanity. A preacher advocating the burning of the Quran to "honor" 9/11. A superstar athlete lying to his wife in order to feed his ego with a sequence of women. A father calling his child a "sissy" because the kid wouldn't go on a ride at Great America. My own feelings of impatience and self-pity.
Then every so often I see something unbelievably kind. Yesterday we went to the 7th Heaven concert at Castaways on North Avenue Beach. The venue is a rooftop patio high above the lakefront. It's accessed by a staircase or an elevator (although the elevator was out of service yesterday). During the show, two members of the band (Keith Semple and Nick Cox) heard of a girl in a wheelchair and her friends who wanted to see the show but couldn't because of the elevator issues. Instead, they were stationed on the path below, happy to just listen to the music.
Before one of the final songs, they acknowledged "Sara" and said they wanted to dedicate the next song to her. They exhorted the crowd to follow them as they moved the show to a lower patio area-- an area in the direct line of sight of the wheelchair-bound girl and her group on the beach.
The radiant joy on her face as Keith and Nick sang to her is something I'll remember for a very long time. It was a classy, very emotional moment. As I looked at the other fans around me, there were plenty of teary eyes. I was struck by how such a simple gesture from two very fortunate but humble men had the power to transform a girl's afternoon into something special. Truly amazing.
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