Hope in a Flash

As I was driving home from work a few days ago, I witnessed something horridly shocking. Two men on the side of the very busy, rush-hour filled freeway, cars parked. One was walking towards the other, I thought in efforts to help with a broken down car. I thought, that is, until I saw the first man gesturing a "you gonna mess with this?" gesture and the second ripping off his sweatshirt. It was only as I glanced in my rear view mirror that I saw the pounce- the two literally attacked each other on the side of the road, drawing traffic in that direction to a screeching halt as the drivers feared hitting these two rage filled demons.

It made me sick to my stomach. I hated seeing that. It was something out of a movie, and I cut out movies with such violence from my life years ago.

The only think I could think of to counteract such nonsense was to replace the visual with something positive. And so, I went to You Tube, and I typed in "flash mob."

Flash mobs, to me, are symbols of what good there is left in the world. A massive group of strangers, compiling themselves for a few hours to a few days, to learn, rehearse and perform a crazy song and dance, all for the totally free provision of joy to others. Can goodness get any more pure? It's so ludicrously simple, so purely delightful that it could only have popped out of a Charles Dickens novel. Only after, of course, the very evil villain that Dickens was so talented at creating was defeated in the last twenty pages. Flash mobs scream innocence- ice cream cones melting in your hands on a hot day, skipping like a kid, laughing until no sound comes out. Flash mobs are here to remind us that there is still good in the world.

So, I sat on You Tube for an hour or more, watching people dance to rave versions of Julie Andrews in Antwerp, people sing greetings to weary travelers in Heathrow airport, and even an impromptu rendition of Handel's Messiah in a shopping mall's food court. I smiled. I felt better knowing that there were people out there willing to make fools of themselves in the name of joy and happiness. I went to bed and rested well.

See the wonderful flash mob that started it all!