Steven Weber
Wussies Among Us
When did people turn? Can we pinpoint the exact moment when profit trumped compassion? When the most admirable qualities of mercy, reflection and charity were deemed as being "wussy" or for "losers"? Would the old fashioned and loving version of Jesus Christ be looked at with incredulous smirks by present day publicists and sponsors? Would Abe Lincoln be forced to get a set of veneers and undergo Adam's Apple reduction surgery? When every instinct to help our fellow man has reams of fine print attached to what should be a shockingly simple act is the defining characteristic of those who would be the leaders of our nation, it is time to revolt or throw in the towel. No middling, considered responses that eat into action time: boot 'em or lay down.
Since the introduction of the concept of Profit into the human vocabulary, the concept has spread like a toxic frost through our collective DNA, crystallizing any effort as a species to raise itself above the beasts that skulk in our nature, paralyzing the healing, unifying compassion just at the spot where it knocked at the door, to go no further.
But there are heroes, whose voices are rarely heard above the din of the stock exchange floor. They come from all walks of life. They are your neighbors, your friends, your family. They are the likely and the unlikely. Until the day something mysteriously impels them, overcomes them and, in a split second they act to change the course of another person's life for the better. Some are thrust over the line of safety and into a realm of danger. Others go about their days, quietly putting themselves second and someone else first.
There was the small quarantined village of Kikwit where a motley band of humanitarian surgeons scrambled to treat victims of Ebola virus. Not enough surgical gloves and gowns to go around, no facilities to sterilize bloodied garments and sheets; the eyes of the bedridden dying staring out through a haze of smoldering debris and cremated corpses; the wails of undernourished children piercing the leaden air as their helpless mothers look on. Death was here in the village of Kikwit.
In a makeshift clinic, behind a screen, a wizened woman bears down into the waiting hands of a gowned and masked doctor. She, amidst all this, is giving birth. And the doctor assists. A nurse, frightened and hesitant, stands near -- but not too near. Ebola is blood-borne -- and there is blood. ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-weber/wussies-among-us_b_52820.html
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