Kim Yu-Na’s performance tonight was an more than an exercise of breathtaking virtuosity. It was a sheer spectacle of highest human potential achieved by nothing less than relentless determination. What is of note to me isn’t the medal or the performance; next week, I will cease to care about this Olympic just as I have with every other and I can hardly tell the difference between her and the girl exempt from the podium. I wonder if witnessing her rise to fame will similarly give rise to this generation’s desire to match her willpower. I doubt that after the tears are shed and the articles are read spectators of the sport and the citizens of her country will attempt more than a whimper in pursuant of their own passions.
I, one of the noted casual observers, don’t remember the last time I was that passionate about anything.
I gave a ride to a total stranger today. It was fervently snowing and the 59-year-old African-American woman was just rejected by a taxi. As she turned, cold and disappointed, I carelessly turned and blocked 2 lanes in order to offer her a ride. And as angry commuters navigated around a snowstorm and an ignorant rebel of a Korean dude in a Japanese car with California license plates driving around New York, the lady, for the first time in her life, then reluctantly took up an offer I have given only a handful of times before.
“If I showed you an ID or something would that make you feel safer?”
“Don’t worry, I know how to defend myself.”
Slush turned, visibility fell, and the radio shrilled on as two strangers braved the deadly winter storm together. I soon realized there is nothing I can do or say to make her feel any less insecure. We drove ever so carefully but diligently towards her workplace on the highest hill in Valhalla, where the county prison is located precariously located adjacent to the county hospital. The 15 minute drive up the hill quickly became treacherous, but the woman was clearly more preoccupied about the circumstances that led her to do something so out of the ordinary.
“I’m so glad you picked me up. I usually take the bus but that was going to take forever and the taxi would have cost me an arm and a leg.” But this was quickly followed by a “B!tch, get out of the way!” and a “$#!T, make that turn already, b!tch!” Clearly her ambivalence over this unfortunately fortunate experience led to such contrarian outbursts, one moment appreciating the fortune of expediency, but the next displaying nervous impatience regardless.
Being a good Samaritan clearly has its obstacles. I would have shared her very sentiment if faced with the same situation. But just because the right thing to do isn’t the easiest thing to do doesn’t mean it’s not something that I ought to do.