Restored

My faith in humanity had been waning as of late, no doubt attributable to the rise of the Delta Variant, rampant climate disasters, and my ill-timed dive into the works of Cormac McCarthy. I couldn't shake this feeling of what's the point? Why swim upstream when everyone else seems to elbow you out of the way for their own benefit? Why try? And while I'd never make the list of contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize, I like to think that I make at least a small attempt each day to make the world a better place.

With each fast-food cashier getting punched because they asked someone to wear a mask, or every wildfire that seems to ignite (an act of God, gender reveal, or otherwise), I wasn't growing angry so much as I was growing indifferent. Shrugging off the blight with apathy I usually reserve for math problems or baseball.

But this attitude changed this past weekend. At somewhere between 5:45 am and 6:30 am, my heart thawed a bit. I, along with thousands of other cyclists, participated in the Pan-Mass Challenge. A 110-mile ride through the heart of Massachusettes in order to raise funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the PMC has been doing some amazing things over the past 4 decades. And while the sheer numbers of riders and the amounts of money they raised for the charity are, simply, astounding, what really took me back were the spectators.

With a few exceptions, no one has any business being awake at 5:45 in the morning. Adding to that, no one should be fully clothed with homemade signs, cowbells, and coffee fueling the cheers while they stand on the side of the road and encourage each and every cyclist to keep going at that hour of the day. But that's just what I saw on every mile of the ride. Families clapped and waved, bands played, children offered bottles of water, emergency personnel cheered, and entire neighborhoods along the route were decorated with balloons, posters, and chalk drawings.

Not a single one of them needed to be there.

They weren't there for riches, for ego, or for status. They were there to cheer on humanity. To stand arm in arm with us as we fight this horrible disease. To thank us and to encourage us. To show us that there's still something worth fighting for. To make sure that no matter how dark the world may seem, together we can make it brighter.

And so we will. Let's keep going, together.