In the south, people wave to me all the time. I have never experienced anything like it before. Whether I’m passing by at close to the speed of sound on a steep downhill or racing ants (and losing) on brutal uphill climbs, people wave to me. I have watched gardeners notice me and stand up from their kneeling just to wave. Mechanics have laid down their tools to give me the ever-rare two-handed wave. School children half-awake on their morning bus rides have perked up and passed me energy through a flurry of waves.
Each wave I get helps me push down just a bit harder on my pedals.
Each wave also reaffirms what I believe to be true: People are good.
Through waving, people communicate more than just a ‘Hello’. They recognize you, they say ‘Yes’ to you (as opposed to ‘No’). Though in a small amount, maybe just a few seconds, they give you a bit of their single, most-valuable asset: their time. When thought of as a time donation, a wave, though short in duration, is kind of a big deal.
All our lives we battle the messages that media perpetuates and forces upon us. It’s no secret that the slogan “If it bleeds, it leads!” applies to all types of mass print and video media consumed today. Front page space, top-of-the-hour time slots, and ‘Breaking News’ labels are all reserved for the bloodiest, most tragic stories of our existence.
Fire here!
Shooting on your block!
Kidnapping there!
War there, here, and over there!
Over time, consuming countless stories like these taints our perception of the world. We begin to think danger lurks behind every corner and that every country other than the one in which we live is threatening. It makes us shut out the outside world. It deadens our compassion.
For the past few years, I’ve been nursing a hunch that the world is being misrepresented by the very media outlets we trust to show us the world.
Traveling confirms this sad hypothesis.
Traveling and meeting people who inhabit the areas of the world that have been smeared by the media, drawing energy from their waves and warmth from their smiles, re-wires the brain to create its strongest impressions not from biased, profit-driven secondhand sources but from our brothers and sisters in humanity and the Earth herself.
I know I’m only a few weeks into this trip, but so far, every interaction I’ve had with every person I’ve met has reinforced the notion that people are good.
What if this notion is true? What if people of the world really are good, if the majority of humankind isn’t represented accurately by the media it consumes? The existence of such a disparity between the reality of humanity that we experience and the one created by our TVs and newspapers makes me wonder:
Why do we gobble up all the bloody, violence-filled, fire-charred, rape-scarred, racism-colored, hate-fueled stories the media throws at us each day?
Why do we tolerate it?
Why is this the type of information we use as the foundation of our world views?
Why don’t we just say ‘No’ to it all and demand information that better mirrors the world we actually witness, the people we actually know?
I know that, for some, stories of war, murder, fire, rape, and other tragedy are the stories that hit closest to home. And I don’t think those stories should be removed from our media.
But balance it out.
Tell us about the people in the world who are doing positive things. Tell us about the waving people of the Carolinas and Georgia. Tell us about the fundraisers, the activists, the poets who just couldn’t keep quiet. Tell us more. Work on smothering our fears rather than incubating them.
Posted in Bike trip: East coast America, Ms. Baran's Project
