When the only thing that makes sense is kindness | Perspective

Is anyone else weeping a lot?

I am.

This isn’t depression or sadness. I’m weeping over the aching beauty of the human condition, how much this world loves and needs us, how instinctively we hunger for connection — and how, when push comes to shove, we rush to help the people cut off from it.

I’m weeping because life is gorgeous. The world is a miracle. We are massively capable of being tender with it, and kind. In the isolation of my home, I read stories and watch videos about everyday acts of goodness and sweetness, and I don’t even bother trying to stop the tears anymore.

Images of people around the world praying outside hospitals for the well-being of medical staff — while the staff prays inside for the survival of their patients.

Photos of families waving through nursing home windows at their elderly relatives, shouting, “We’re here! We love you!”

A video of neighbors in Chestnut Hill who gathered in a park — a safe distance away from one another — to sing “Happy Birthday” to a teen whose Sweet 16 deserved celebration. When they finished, they segued into John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and I lost it.

The same way I did when I thanked the Aldi cashier for being on the job, the SEPTA driver for putting himself in harm’s way, the postal worker for helping us stay in touch with a world we miss like crazy.

Today show anchor Hoda Kotb gets it. Last week, after a chipper interview with New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees about his $5 million donation of meals to the state of Louisiana, she thanked him for his generosity — and then broke down. She appeared mortified by her inability to hold herself together.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out, but, honestly, what was there to apologize for? We’re in a life-and-death time of relentless fear. It would be the height of cynicism to regard the selfless deeds of others with cool detachment. Without hope in humanity’s goodness, what will sustain us? How we will endure?

When the going gets tough, the tough drop the pretenses. They reset their default buttons to unabashed love, away from irony, and hipness, and elitism, and cleverness, which are thin gruel when we stand to lose so much of what we cherish — including the simple privilege of being near one another.

I mentioned as much on Facebook last week, and dozens of readers poured their hearts out.

“Your post hits home,” wrote Tom McCourt, a self-described “250-pound Marine not prone to tears.”

“I have cried like this twice before: when we lost Dad, and when we lost Mom. Spontaneously, unexpectedly, with less advance notice than a sneeze.”

Sharon Gunther suggested that crying portends that something big could be in the wings. “This is the way transformation happens,” she said, “the tears moisten the slide into a new way.”

And Al Tucker said that music and art are touching him in ways they never have before.

“The other day I bawled after seeing a video of Steve Martin playing the banjo in the woods. The beauty of it overwhelmed me,” he wrote. “... A video of the empty streets of Florence along the Arno River with not a soul to be seen left me feeling the same way. … totally out of nowhere but it was like a floodgate.”

His comment about empty streets reminded me of Philadelphia in September of 2015, when Center City was closed to traffic for the two-day visit of Pope Francis.

Back then, a sense of goodness seemed to float over the city as the pontiff spoke about how humans are so abundantly loved by God that we have nothing to lose by loving others. There is no scarcity, he said. So we can stop grabbing at status, hoarding comforts, and yearning for a win because those things never will fill the hole we think they’re filling.

When he left town, it felt like he took that sentiment with him. I so wanted him to stay and keep lighting the way for us.

But here we are, up against a marauding beast, and so many people — here and around the globe — are lighting the way all on their own. A deadly microbe has gone viral, but so, too, have stories of who we are at our best.

The only thing that makes sense to me today is kindness. It makes me weep.

Ronnie Polaneczky is the editor of The UpSide, The Inquirer’s source of the best of us — and the best in us: Inquirer.com/upside. Email her at rpolaneczky@inquirer.com.