Tragedy in a minor key gets most of us to hum along

We’ve just spent seven fruitless hours at Miami International, and I feel great. I haven’t been this happy since my car got towed on the Friday before Labor Day and I spent all day waiting in line at the impound lot.

It’s been posited that when horror and deprivation strike, humans plumb our deepest reserves of goodwill and heroism, and turn adversity into triumph. I tend to disagree. Major tragedies generally reduce all but the very best of us to venal savages. This hotel does not offer Wi-Fi - OK, fine, does not offer free Wi-Fi - so I’m not going to be able to offer any concrete examples. But I’m pretty sure history will bear me out.

Minor tragedies, on the other hand, forge community. Any time a group of strangers find themselves mutually and massively inconvenienced by the government, by some soulless multinational corporation, or even by the vicissitudes of the weather, amazing things happen. We’re nicer to one another than we’ve ever been.

Three years ago, my flight to Mexico was diverted to Houston because of a medical emergency. A group of 50 passengers were told that we would not be able to fly out until Tuesday night. It was Friday morning. Over the course of the next 12 hours, a few seats opened up on each of several departing flights. As a collective, we told the airline whom to prioritize: A young woman on the way to defend her dissertation was the first to leave, followed by two brothers on their way to see a sick uncle. This sounds like a recipe for disaster; instead, it was a blueprint for good government. Our decisions were collective, unanimous. There was very little discussion, and no pork-barrel amendments.