Musing: Ordinary Goodness

Pete Carlson left his family and flew to Toronto for a conference. Like any seasoned traveler, his thoughts during the approach to the airport were routine—what he’d do after landing, how quickly he could grab his bag and exit the airport, what the city had in store for him.

In an instant, everything changed.

Instead of rolling smoothly to a stop at the gate, Pete dangled upside down, held in place by his seatbelt, inside the wreckage of a crashed plane.

I can only imagine how harrowing the event was, but a few hours later, he sat with a reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I’ve linked to the extraordinary interview in the show notes.

“No time to be scared?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, yeah. Plenty of time,” Pete replied. “The absolute initial feeling is just… get out of this.”

Pete doesn’t hesitate to admit that gut punch of fear that follows a horrifying event. The moment of shock and amazement to discover you’re still alive when it could have ended much differently. We’ve all been there, in some form or another.

In the thousands of flights I’ve taken as a passenger, I’ve never come close to a moment like Pete’s.

The scariest flight I can recall was a landing in Philadelphia. The pilot announced he couldn’t verify whether the nose gear was locked in place. He asked the flight attendants to secure the cabin. They repeated the instructions about emergency landings and evacuations. Unlike the typical preflight emergency announcements, they had the passengers’ rapt attention.

The cabin grew tense as we circled over the ocean. Burning off fuel, the pilot explained. I knew what he meant. We would be lighter, the easier to stop if things went wrong. And, of course, less flammable.

As we made our final descent, we held our collective breaths. I looked out the window, expecting to see waiting fire trucks. I’ve had a few flights greeted in such a way.

I didn’t expect to see those firetrucks racing along beside us, prepared for a disaster.

In the end, it was anti-climatic. We touched down smoothly and taxied to the gate, albeit under the watchful eyes of the fire brigade.

Not much of an exciting story-telling device, but at least we didn’t end up upside down on the tarmac.

Even amidst the chaos of that Toronto crash, Pete said the passengers didn’t panic. He described something else entirely. “Everyone on that plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another. How to console one another.”

Imagine that. You’ve just survived a plane crash. You unbuckle your seatbelt and fall through the air, landing on a floor that had been a ceiling only seconds earlier. Fuel streams down the windows. The air reeks of fumes.

But instead of chaos, there’s kindness. Instead of despair, there’s compassion. Instead of terror, people are helping one another.

In our modern internet-driven world, social media overflows with arguments, outrage, and division. It’s easy to forget just how good we are to each other when it truly matters. In those truly terrible moments, we don’t have to look far to be reminded of the positive within ordinary people.

After Hurricane Helene ravaged Asheville, neighbors helped neighbors, of course—but what struck me most were the strangers. People whom we had never met reached out and offered what they could, asking for nothing in return.

One moment stands out. A small thing, yet so powerfully big.

In those first few days, with electricity nonexistent and cell phone towers destroyed, we were cut off from the world. No calls. No texts. No way to reach loved ones or even dial 911. We couldn’t even get news to find out how others fared. Most of you saw footage of floods and mudslides on the news and the internet long before we did.

Then word spread—REI, the outdoor store, somehow regained their internet access. They opened their Wi-Fi to the public, beaming the signal onto the sidewalk outside. People sat in clusters, phones and laptops connecting with the world. Friends and relatives spoke for the first time with people who hadn’t been able to reach them for days. A young couple arranged a motel room, a temporary refuge since their house had been destroyed. Gasps signaled someone had seen a video of the local destruction.

I barely noticed the car when it first pulled up to the curb. A man stepped out and called for attention. His restaurant, Brixx Pizza in Biltmore Park, had just received a shipment of bottled water—a precious commodity in those first desperate days, as we had little access to running or drinkable water. Anyone, he said, who needed water could come to his restaurant and take what they needed. No charge. No questions. Just come.

Then he broke down in tears.

All he could choke out was how much he loved his community. How much it hurt him to see the suffering and the struggles.

It wasn’t a marketing ploy. He wasn’t giving water to friends or family. He offered what he had been blessed to receive to strangers. No strings attached.

That’s what we do. When disaster strikes, when the world turns upside down, we help.

And it wasn’t just him. And it wasn’t just our town. Across the region, people showed up. Strangers arrived from hundreds of miles away with tools and supplies. They manned relief stations. Mucked mud from flooded buildings. Cleared trees blocking roads. Rebuilt driveways and bridges.

This wasn’t even unique to Hurricane Helene. It happens after every disaster.

Not just the big ones. Even in the smallest, most personal moments of crisis, help appears.

The next time you drive past an accident on the highway, take a moment. Look beyond the flashing lights. You’ll see the people who stopped. Ordinary people who pulled over, who ran toward the wreck, who offered a hand.

Don’t focus on the people who drove by. Notice the ones who took time out of their day to help a stranger. Because some always do.

So as you go through your day, look for them—the quiet helpers, the ones who step up when they don’t have to. They’re out there. They always are.

Just as Pete said about that crash landing in Toronto: “Everyone seemed like they were there to make sure we helped each other.”

Ordinary goodness.