Goodness
Within 24 hours of my return to the States I’ve found myself at the center of an intense nationwide discussion over what it is to be good.
The situation is like this: I’m trying to get from Singapore to Vermont for a writers’ conference, which involves 37 hours of travel and two layovers, one of which is in New York. I explain all this to the Uber driver who is driving me to La Guardia in the morning, who in turn shares with me his dreams of writing a children’s book with his kids. We talk about raising children, even though my contribution is only hypothetical, and about what it means to be accountable for a small human dependent on you not just materially, but morally. Then we drive by a building on fire.
Flames are licking the air through the blank absence of a second floor window, shattered by a prior explosion, crumbling in waves towards the pavement. The driver turns to me and asks if he can stop to help, I say yes, obviously; we swerve into an empty space and he leaps out of the car. I’m a little slower, and when I join him on the sidewalk a couple of seconds after, he’s yelling at the building: EVACUATE, EVACUATE. I’m pretty useless in terms of most life skills but yelling I’m good at. I join him, I scream FIRE.
Has anyone called the fire department, I ask, someone says yes, another shower of glass tinkles towards us like rain, another someone shrieks in fear. I turn back and the driver is gone. Into the building, I’ll learn later. A man emerges sleepily from the front steps and I scream, FASTER, FIRE. He looks up and doesn’t register the flames that are now shooting out of the building, or maybe he does. Maybe in moments like these your brain stutters. For me, certainly. Even as my mouth opens, my mind struggles to catch up. I’m moving with pure adrenaline, it is only later that I parse these moments through with intelligence.
The driver, where is the driver? The fire truck arrives and someone else shrieks, move your car, you’re in front of the hydrant, move it. I am once again confronted with my lack of practical skills. I am helpless before the car, which is inverted from those we have in Singapore, everything flipped in a mirror image. The fire truck bleats. Panic sharpens and accumulates. People move faster. I yell again, FIRE, quite pointlessly now that the fire truck’s alarm is roaring. A man I don’t know jumps into the car and drives it away, I follow it, when I turn around the driver has emerged from the building, having coaxed two people outside, very possibly saving their lives.
The firefighters take over from here. As we drive away, I turn back, and see the metal crane of the fire truck extending towards the second window, like a steel tongue.
That was crazy, we agree. We talk all the way to the airport, the thread of our earlier conversation now suffused with the heat of what’d just happened. We inevitably return to the topic of how to be. At the start of the year, he was thinking hard about what it meant to be a person in the world. What sort of person did he want to be? It is the sort of question I wrestle with daily, both personally and as a writer creating characters. Every single day, I agree, we try our best. But you – you succeeded, you didn’t even hesitate. The building could have exploded, you could have died. You’re a hero. He shrugs: my wife is going to kill me if she finds out. We laugh, exchange contact information. I tweet about it, get on my flight, and when I land an hour later, the entire internet is talking about it.
Uh oh. I think about his wife and shoot him an email. We accidentally went viral, I tell him, and news outlets are already reaching out. Are you okay with media attention?
Thankfully, he is. And hear this: his name is Fritz Sam.
Since then, the story has been covered by USAToday, Washington Post, Upworthy, PIX11, CNBC, NBC, WNBC, CBS2, and counting. I’ve appeared with Fritz live on CNN Tonight (him in person, me, calling in from a closet on conference grounds). Uber is thrilled, obviously. People are having long discussions in my mentions about Fritz’s heroism. They’ve found my website and flooded me with messages to pass on to him. Strangers on the internet share their own experiences with the kindness of others, about how this story has brought them to tears. In the last years of disaster, Fritz’s act of pure selflessness pierces through and hits something very tender in our collective hearts. And because these conversations are primarily in response to my original tweet, I get notifications for every single one of them. The humming atmosphere of hope now, when I log on to Twitter, feels almost like reverence.
Now what? It is Fritz who saved lives, all I’ve done is yell about it, as I’m wont to do. Yelling, it turns out, has utility, not least because it advocates reward for altruism – part of the delight of this virality is how it can drastically change an unsuspecting person’s life for the better. Not always, but this time, yes. The event is over, the conversation continues, momentum is generated and sustained like cheer reverberating. What an act of bravery, everyone keeps saying, online, in the news. How amazing, how wonderful.
But is it bravery? It seems urgent to me to state that how we think and talk about it constitutes an enduring part of this story too. I’m thinking about how Fritz leapt without hesitation, how the heat left no time for calculation. To know fear and run towards it is brave; this, to me, seemed an act that originated from a strength of moral character. But moral character does not bloom by chance. I’m thinking about our conversation in the car, about how intentional Fritz was with the choices he made every day, months before this moment of crisis. All of which accumulated into the Fritz who ran straight into a burning building. To call him brave is true but somehow rings insufficient. It feels temporal, but the goodness that birthed this runs deep.
We keep hoping for a better world, or at least, I do. The word inspiring keeps getting thrown around. It echoes with promise, for part of inspiration demands action. Let us participate in goodness, let us fulfil it. In the aftermath of the fire, let us react not only with admiration, but emulation. For goodness is something one can become fluent in, too. Let this not be relegated to simply being a wonderful memory. How rare it is, to meet someone so clearly good. How easy it is to forget that this, too, is a choice.
