Once in a while — maybe more often than we realize — the public seems to grow weary of the constant barrage of negativity it gets on TV, newspapers and other forms of media.
Thus, when we get a good-news story to hang on to, we grab it with gusto, unable to let it go. Do you recall the time Chesley “Sulley” Sullenberger flew that jetliner onto the Hudson River, saving the lives of the more than 100 passengers and crew? We loved that story. We cherished the cool, calm, collected nature of the flight crew that Sulley commanded.
We were being battered by bad news at the time. We wanted to keep cheering Sulley and his crew.
I am waiting to cheer some rescuers in Thailand for very much the same reason, not to mention that 13 lives are at stake.
Eight boys have been evacuated from that flooded cave in northern Thailand. Four more boys remain trapped, along with their soccer coach. I join the rest of the world in hoping — and, indeed, believing — the rest of the boys and their coach will be taken out safely. They will all be reunited with their families. Their lives will go on, albeit after some serious emotional and perhaps psychological rehabilitation.
One aspect of this story that I find particularly heartwarming has been the reaction of the boys’ parents regarding the coach to led them into the cave in the first place. They are refusing to blame the coach for the predicament that trapped the team for more than two weeks.
The team walked into the cave. They got deep into the bowels of the cavern. Then the rain came. It poured! The deluge that no one predicted trapped the boys and their coach.
The parents’ generous spirits have lifted my own spirits as I join the rest of the world in watching this drama unfold in real time.
We want this story to end well. I am now officially quite hopeful that it will. We need a reason to smile and to wish Godspeed to these youngsters, their coach … and the responders who have risked their own lives to save the lives of others.
