Faith in Humanity Restored: There Is Still So Much Good in the World

I have a confession.

I stopped watching the news a long time ago.

It's not that I stopped caring. I still want to know what's happening out there in the world, and I have no interest in burying my head in the sand or pretending awful things don't happen. But somewhere along the way, the daily news stopped feeling like staying informed and started feeling like a steady drip of reasons to be afraid. Another tragedy. Another heartbreaking headline. Another reminder of the worst we're capable of.

So I stopped handing it so much of my attention.

Instead, I went looking for something else.

The good.

These days I hunt for the stories that remind me kind people are everywhere, quietly doing their thing. Strangers helping strangers. Communities showing up for one another. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things for no reason other than somebody needed them to. And every so often, I find one that really gets me.

This one got me.

A toddler was reported missing on a beach in Poland. Within moments, hundreds of beachgoers dropped what they were doing and came together to look for him. They linked arms and formed a human chain along the shoreline, moving as one.

Hundreds of strangers.

Just sit with that picture for a second.

They'd come to the beach that day with their own families and their own plans. They were swimming, chatting, half-dozing in the sun, building sandcastles, chasing their own kids around. Every one of them had a life waiting beyond that stretch of sand, full of the same worries and half-finished to-do lists the rest of us haul around. Then word spread that a little boy was missing.

And all of it stopped.

Nobody asked whose child he was. Nobody needed to know the family first. They just started looking.

Thankfully, the little boy was safe the whole time. His dad had wandered off with him into the dunes to collect shells, with no idea a search was even happening. But the people standing shoulder to shoulder on that beach didn't know that yet. As far as they were concerned, somewhere close by was a parent living through the worst moment of their life, and a little boy who might need them.

So they became the helpers.

And I honestly think that's one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a very long time.

Faith in Humanity Restored: Look for the Helpers

I believe most people are fundamentally good.

Maybe that sounds naïve to some. I'm okay with that.

The way I see it, we're souls having a human experience, and part of being human is being wonderfully, frustratingly flawed. We make mistakes. We get things wrong. We let each other down. We have moments we're proud of and moments we'd quietly like to hand back. But we also get to choose. Over and over, in the small moments life sets in front of us, we get to decide who we want to be.

And goodness is a choice.

That day on a beach in Poland, hundreds of people made it all at once.

Maybe the story lands harder because I'm a mother. I keep imagining what it would feel like to believe my child was gone, and then to look up and see strangers stretched down the sand, arm in arm, searching for my baby as though he belonged to them too.

I think I'd cry about it for the rest of my life.

There's one more thing I can't stop turning over in my mind. For those few minutes, none of the things we usually let divide us mattered. Not one of them. They were simply people, helping another person.

Look at what we can do when we choose each other.

Fred Rogers used to tell a story about the scary things he saw on the news as a boy, and how his mother taught him to look for the helpers. I loved that the moment I first heard it. Because the helpers are everywhere, and most of them will never make a headline.

They're the person who notices someone struggling and walks over instead of walking past. The stranger who stops when it would've been easier to keep going. The one who spots a child, an elderly neighbor, or someone clearly in over their head, and decides that whatever they were doing can wait a few minutes.

They're ordinary people handed a chance to do something good, choosing to do it.

I think those stories deserve our attention too. Maybe especially now.

I'm careful about what I let into my head these days, because I've learned that what I focus on quietly shapes how I experience the whole world. That doesn't mean pretending the darkness isn't real. It just means refusing to let the darkness convince me it's all there is.

I want to notice the good. I want to pass it on. I want the beautiful stories to travel just as far as the terrible ones, because I really do believe goodness ripples outward. We watch someone help, and we're a little more likely to help. We see people come together, and we remember that we can too.

And sometimes, on an ordinary day when the world feels especially heavy, you stumble across hundreds of strangers standing shoulder to shoulder on a beach for a little boy they've never met.

And suddenly the world feels a little different.

There is still so much good here. There are still so many helpers.

I'm going to keep looking for them.

About the Author | Day 221

I'm a soul-led coach, writer, entrepreneur, mother, and recovering perfectionist. For 221 days straight, I've shown up here to write about life while I'm still in the middle of living it — not from the tidy far side of having it all figured out.

I write about healing, faith, motherhood, growth, business, the uncomfortable realizations, the ordinary moments, and the small things that keep reminding me there's still an astonishing amount of beauty in this very imperfect world.

Day 221 is about one of those reminders.

There will always be terrible stories competing for our attention, and I don't think we have to look away from them. I just refuse to let them make us forget about everyone quietly doing good.

So I'll keep looking for the helpers.

And when I find them, I'll keep telling you about them.