As a native New Yorker and a die-hard Yankees fan, the year I lived in Boston was not always an easy one. When I braved the T wearing my Yankees jacket, I definitely got more than a few dirty looks.
But I was in Boston on 9/11, and was amazed at how Bostonians rallied around and supported New York City. Though my memory might be faulty and I may have imagined it, I think I might have even got some smiles and nods when people saw my Yankees jacket in the weeks following 9/11.
It’s a same way people are feeling now about the relationship between New York and Boston. Jon Stewart said it well: “New Yorkers and Boston obviously have kind of a little bit of a competition. Often, the two cities accusing each other of various levels of suckitude. But it is in situations like this that we realize it is clearly a sibling rivalry, and that we are your brothers and sisters in this type of event.”
Indeed, even as scary events raise our anxiety levels, one of the unexpected benefits of fear is that it causes us to spend more time focusing on what unites us than on what divides us.
On the day after Election Day, psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt had writtne an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times entitled “We Need a Little Fear.” In it, he reminds us that in times of crisis, we come together in ways we would not have done otherwise:
A Bedouin proverb says, “Me against my brother, my brothers and me against my cousins, then my cousins and me against strangers.” Human beings are pretty good at uniting to fight at whatever level is most important at a given moment. This is why every story about a team of warriors or superheroes features an internal rivalry, but all hatchets are buried just before the climactic final battle in which the team vanquishes the external enemy.
There’s a reason that one of the great Hebrew songs says, “Behold, how good and beautiful it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity” (Ps. 133:1) — when we come together united to support each other, when we see our former rivals as “brothers and sisters,” it truly is good and beautiful.
So even as we are afraid, even as our world seems to be ever-more broken, we can take this moment to transform our fears into a vision of brotherhood and sisterhood.
After all, if Red Sox and Yankee fans can join together in harmony, anyone can do it.
