PUT LOVE IN MOTION
ONE DAY LAST WEEK STARTED OUT HECTIC:
kids’ breakfasts, getting them off to school, and then, as I was walking out to the van to drive to a kids’ safety program with the Nelson Mandela Bay Police, I was met with a soaking wet wife and our 12-year-old son. They had been trying to stop the gush of water erupting from a broken water main outside our garage. I left as my son put a pail over the main, so the water didn’t rain down, and my wife called the plumber. I didn’t want any of the 163 preteens I would be talking with to miss my team’s part of the program. Our mission was to add inspiration and fun to an otherwise dry police safety chat about bullying, physical abuse, drugs, and alcohol.
The talk was in a less safe part of Gqeberha, a city in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. As I got closer to my destination, the traffic slowed and piled up. Normal rush hour? I wondered. Or maybe an accident? A few hundred meters ahead, I saw cars and trucks driving onto the shoulder and I began calculating the time that would be lost. Then I got close enough to see why: a child in his school uniform lying in the middle of the two-lane road.
No cars had stopped. No one was with the child or directing traffic. Cars were driving onto the shoulder to avoid driving over him. I stopped my car and went to the boy. He was not moving. I could not tell if he was breathing. I waved down a car and asked how to call the police. He gave me the number, and as I dialed, I asked him, “Why is no one stopping to help?”
“What could they do?” the man responded. A few hundred more cars passed as the emergency operators took down my information, and I stopped another car to find out where we were. That driver, too, was impatient. The young boy was an inconvenient obstacle in his path.
As I walked back to the boy, a petite woman was getting out of her car. She flagged down the traffic to let her pass. Then, with muscle memory of trained elegance, she examined the boy and looked up at me. As our eyes met, she paused and said simply, “He’s dead.” As we were kneeling over him, a police car pulled up and took over.
I got back in my car and hurried on to my talk, but my mind raced much faster. I was hundreds of meters from the boy when the traffic piled up. How long did it take before I got there? What if someone had responded instantly? Would the boy be alive? Why did a lone boy try to cross that road in the first place? That led to thinking about the boy’s parents and siblings and how the police would figure out who the child on the black tarmac was—and how they would inform the family.
I think Einstein would counsel us that when we combine empathy, love, and intention with action, we create value.
Mostly, I was mad. Mad that no one had stopped. Mad that no one had even called the emergency line. Mad that the country I love could be so callous. Mad at myself because I could not slow down my own brain as I clenched the wheel and tried to focus on my destination—to be with the kids where I was going. I also thought of the woman who stopped. And that one thought gave me hope.
In our parenting and teacher trainings, we talk about responsibility and emphasize that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. I know that. But still I was swearing. “Such f***ing apathy!” Where is the Ubuntu? Where is the golden rule? Where is the guidance of Christ or the right actions dictated by Islam’s holy guidance?
As I pulled into the school parking lot, I fought to gather myself. Then the children flowed out for the safety talk—their uniforms mirroring the uniform of the young boy I had left with the police—and I was back lecturing the people in the cars while my self-talk screamed at me to override the anger and my shaking body. There is no evil, only ignorance, I reminded myself. Meanwhile my brain yelled, Sutherland, you hypocrite! You teach Vipassana meditation—no judgment, nothing good, nothing bad. Just ignorance. I wrote a note to the woman who gave me hope.
It is the USA’s 250th anniversary, and I think my fellow Americans are no different from the South Africans, Ugandans, or Nicaraguans who blame their actions or inactions on bad government, poverty, or fear of getting involved. The real problem, as Albert Einstein pointed out, is that “nothing happens until something moves.” Our feelings of empathy, love, and good intentions—no matter how intense they are—have no value unless we act on them. Basic physics also dictates that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. We don’t stop because we’re in motion, and stopping would pull us out of our own special orbit.
We blame the government or the system or the other side for the simple fact that we don’t move to act or stop to act. We fail to act mostly because our habits are not structured to mindfully stop and do the right thing. Helping others is not a habit for many people.
I think Einstein would counsel us that when we combine empathy, love, and intention with action, we create value. Until there is action, empathy, love, and intention have no power over hate, cruelty, envy, bigotry, apathy, and indifference. Love only wins if love is put in motion.
The woman wrote back: “It is funny when reading your praise. I’ve actually spent much of the day wondering if there was something more I could have done, and that has been hard to process. So your message itself made the burden a little lighter.”
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Paul Sutherland lives in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape, South Africa. He is grateful to the woman who put love in motion and stopped to help that small boy. He would welcome your stories of seeing love put in motion at paul@paulhsutherland.com.
