A greater sense of empathy and responsibility to the collective whole.

One of the reasons why I love doing disaster response work is because disasters — as hard as they are and by definition a horrible experience — do bring out the best in people.

You see people stepping up. You see people helping others. You see people finding ways to donate their time or their resources. And again, I don’t think it’s a silver lining, but I hope that one of the fundamental things that comes out of this is an experience of empathy for strangers.

…more empathy for the other person. That is a powerful tool.

A council member from Kettle Falls contacted me and was really invested in getting a communication campaign going about how to get the people in his community on the same page — looking out for each other and caring about each other. And that is an example to me of what we have the potential to do here.

If we can all collectively recognize the way that we’ve been shaped, then ideally one of those outcomes is more empathy for the other person. And that is a powerful tool. That’s what I would hope for.