Yesterday a few of us headed down to Reliant Arena to help out with the relief efforts there. We were privilaged to be able to work in the makeshift pharmacy that has been set up, helping people get their perscriptions. I was struck not only by the thousands of evacuees, but also the thousands of volunteers who gave of their time, effort, money, and energy to help. As I sat back, I wondered what stories brought each of them to this place, and what each one of them would tell if they were able to speak.
There are hundreds of thousands of these stories that aren’t covered in the news. People who’ve lost everything. People who’ve dropped their lives to go down and help. People who took off an afternoon because they couldn’t stay at work any longer, and felt like something needed to be done. Big names and people who make a lot of noise get press coverage, but most of these people’s names will never be known.
Some people would have us believe that nobody helps people who don’t look like us or who aren’t in our social status, but in my experience yesterday I found that to be the exception rather than the rule.
There are more sacrifices being made than any of us will ever hear about in the news, whether it be doctors and nurses who fly in from across the country or drug stores that give away millions of dollars of medicine without knowing if they’ll ever get a cent from it, no questions asked.