THE
HEROIC
IMPULSE
BY WIB MIDDLETON
I
t is a bone-chilling, dark
December night in 2015. The
beaches of Lesvos, Greece, are
strewn with tens of thousands
of worthless, bright orange “life”
jackets—just another scam foisted upon refugees fleeing Syria
and other war-torn countries. It
is not unusual to see as many as 2,000
refugees a day attempt the watery
journey from Turkey to the shores of
Greece. Embarking on boats and dinghies that are overcrowded and often
break down, it’s a real gamble as to
whether the refugees will make it the
seven miles to their destination. The
unimaginable death toll by drowning
hits 3,000 in 2015.
Zoë Wild, a young American
woman, stands on the beach looking
out to sea with another woman from
Sweden. Tonight they’re it, just the
two of them, hopeful that they can
guide refugees, often 80 plus in a rub-
ber boat, to a safe landing. The fate of
the refugees is literally in their hands.
Abandoned on the Turkish shore by
smugglers, it is anyone’s guess who is
navigating the boats, or if they even
know how. Zoë scans the horizon
looking for the faintest light from
cellphones held high by refugees. The
onshore signal to the refugees is the
quick on-off flash of headlights. It’s illegal to signal the boats. They have to
be stealthy. It’s crude, but effective.
You might be wondering at this
point what forces are at play that
would cause someone to be moved
into selfless action by a terrible tragedy thousands of miles away and actually take the next step to do something. Where does that heroic impulse
come from that propels one from
empathy to compassionate action? Often we feel the pain of another in our
gut, and tears testify that we care. But
then the phone rings, or we get a text,
and the news report that so moved us
is over, and that tender moment fades
as we move on to the next thing. Taking the next step,—showing up with
an authentic, heartfelt commitment
to help is a whole other story.
Zoë Wild, a successful thirtysomething entrepreneur, grief
counselor, workshop facilitator in
conflict resolution and trauma, with
a lifelong bent for volunteering and
saying “yes,” had planned to spend
time around Christmas in front of a
fire reading books in her cozy Sedona home. She needed to chill. Her
mother was battling cancer, she had
spent Thanksgiving with family, and
this was to be her alone time.
In mid-November she began seeing posts from some of her 5000 Facebook friends about the Syrian refugee
crisis. Heart-wrenching images and
videos of traumatized families and
bodies washing up on the shore of a
IMAGINE l SPRING 2016 15