Like the rest of the world, I was glued to the television. I checked for updates on my phone. I scanned the internet. Twelve young soccer players and their 25-year-old coach, missing for 10 days, were found trapped inside a cave. How have they survived? What is their condition? How will they get out of a water filled cave in which the monsoons of the regions keep filling it with water?
What is it about a national, or in this case, international story that brings people together in response to a tragedy?
The 12 boys and their young coach entered the cave after an afternoon soccer practice. With plans to stay only a short time, the group quickly realized that the sudden rains had restricted their exit route. They ended up on a ledge above the rising waters where they would stay for the next two weeks. For the first 10 days, family and friends, and eventually authorities searched for the boys in vain. After discovering their bikes and some shoes outside the cave, rescuers, including underwater divers, eventually found the group – hungry, tired and temporarily safe but at incredible peril with the pending heavy rains.
How could this happen? What will happen to these young boys? Perhaps it was the mother in me or maybe just plain old human empathy. Like a lot rest of the world, I couldn’t turn away.
We sometimes need a tragedy to bring us together.
We’ve seen it throughout history. We go along in our day-to-day routines, taking sides and dividing into camps. Political sides. Religious differences. Where we live in our neighborhoods or in our cities. Us versus them. And then something happens. We are suddenly and collectively reminded that we have more in common than not.
Researchers have examined the human stress reaction for years. Most of us are familiar with the “fight-or-flight” reaction to stress. We respond to situations of threat in our physical, emotional and, especially, chemical reactions. Our bodies, our muscles and our brains prepare to protect us.
Researchers have also observed a stress reaction that isn’t as well known called the “tend-and-befriend” reaction. In times of acute stress, we respond socially in addition to our physical and chemical reactions. According to the researchers, this social cognition response to threat is rooted in survival, management of resources and perpetuation of our species. We sometimes look to take care of those who are the most vulnerable among us and then look to our community and our social networks to help us manage the situation. Although it’s suggested that how we respond to stress sometimes falls along traditional gender lines, with females being more likely to tend and befriend, all genders are capable of empathy. Given the right circumstances, acute stress situations can bring out what researchers call “pro-social” behaviors. The theories suggest that our survival is sometimes related to how we take care of each other.
In other words, stress situations can sometimes bring out the worst and the best in us. Stress can sometimes can bring out the best for us.
In tragedy situations from Orlando to Las Vegas to New York City on 9/11, we came together as people and we lined up to give blood, donated money and reached out to help our neighbors. On a smaller and more frequent scale, when there is illness or injury or tragedy in our church or neighborhood or school communities, we make casseroles and take in children and help out where we can.
When it’s 12 young boys and their coach in a cave in Thailand, we pray and worry and watch the rescue. I spoke to so many people who were watching and waiting. We celebrated with each victory as those brave divers and rescue workers and physicians – and even the 25 year old coach – helped those boys maintain their health and their sanity and were ultimately reunited with their families.
Tend and befriend should be a political slogan, if not a motto for all of us to adopt every day, not just in the days after a tragedy.
We know that our reactions to stress are not only emotional but physical. Our responses to stress are chemical and neurological. We also know from study after study that brain reactions are not unchangeable. Our immediate response doesn’t have to be anger, pointing fingers and people going to their corners to prepare for war. We can strive to tend and befriend.
In the days of jumping immediately to sides and to corners just because someone disagrees with us politically or offers and opinions we don’t agree, a little tend and befriend might be the way to go. It shouldn’t take a tragedy to bring us together.
