Compassion Awakened by Tornadoes

Mitch Arnold • May 14, 2024

Midwesterners are aware of the devastating potential of tornadoes, but we don’t live our lives with one eye on the sky. In fact, we don’t worry too much at all about them, even when the weather is favorable for their appearance. When they happen, however, they remind us of our vulnerability. My recent experience also reminded me of the importance of compassion.


The forecast three Fridays ago told us that tornadoes could emerge from the strong storms forecast to begin in my area in the mid- to late-afternoon. That’s not uncommon around here for this time of year, so I made a mental note of the threat and went on with my day. I was working from my home office when the first alert appeared on my phone at about 3 pm. I could see clouds to the south and west, but nothing appeared ominous. Then, the siren sounded.


We hear sirens two or three times every year. Usually, that means that a tornado warning has been issued for the county, but it doesn’t always mean that there is a storm in our part of the county. Normally, I explain that to my wife, while she argues with me to hide in the basement. Lynda was at work 30 miles away, so I didn’t have that argument. Instead, I turned on the television and saw that the storm could possibly be headed in my direction, though there hadn’t been a visual confirmation of a tornado. Ironically, the sirens then stopped, so I went out on my patio to get a closer look at the clouds. The clouds didn’t look any worse than they had a few minutes earlier. In fact, I saw golfers on the tee box, continuing their rounds.


When the sirens sounded a second time, just a few minutes later, I decided to pay closer attention to the television. I was steps away from the safe room in my basement, and my cell phone was in my pocket, in case I needed to scurry away to safety. Instead, I saw live footage of a massive tornado on the ground about five miles to the northwest and heading away from me. Since my house and I were safe, at least for the moment, my thoughts drifted to friends and family in the path of the storm.


It's amazing how quickly the human spirit can leave self-absorption and find compassion, when a threat is removed. Minutes earlier, I was preoccupied with thoughts of what I would do if my home was severely damaged or destroyed. Now, I was thinking of others facing that same threat. That realization made me think of how many of us, myself included, live that way every day. We get so consumed with everything that’s going in our lives that we often forget to consider others. That’s not an indictment of character; it’s simply the human condition.


The challenge is to be compassionate while still attending to our needs, and it’s a challenge I face almost every time I board a flight. Moving around in the tight quarters of an airplane is difficult for me, as is getting in and out of those seats. Plus, going down the taxiway takes me longer, so I pre-board whenever possible. Typically, there are three to as many as ten of us doing the same thing – all of us hoping for an uneventful boarding and convenient seatings. As I wait with this group, I survey the competition, trying to determine who needs the front row seats more than I do. When I board, I try to leave the best seats for those who appear to need them the most. That’s obviously an inexact science, and I’ve missed before, but I try to balance compassion with my own needs.



I need to get better doing the same thing away from the airport, and my experience with the tornado reminded me of that. Apparently, a lot of people had a similar awakening, as volunteers almost overwhelmed the coordinators responding to the storm. Driven by compassion awakened by the tornadoes, strangers from all over showed up for the unpleasant work of cleaning up from a storm, and they continued for weeks afterward. While it’s affirming that compassion is so abundant within us, let’s not wait for a tornado to share it.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.

Surviving a Collision with a Garbage Truck

By Mitch Arnold • June 29, 2025
I got hit by a garbage truck the other day, but was able to recover quickly, because it wasn’t the first time it happened, and it won’t be the last. It’s an unfortunate reality that everyone will occasionally run into a garbage truck through no fault of their own. (see ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck” below) One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’ This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’ He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it! Sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. The garbage truck in my latest collision was a prospect who I had never talked to, before picking up the phone and calling him about a position I was helping a client fill. Within seconds of introducing myself, his aggressive tone began to dominate. He demanded that I tell him who my client was and how much they were going to pay. I assured him that I would answer those questions once we determined that his background was a good fit and that he was interested in learning more. Finally, I offered to arrange a call at his convenience, when we could discuss the opportunity further. We never got to that point. After sending him some information on the opportunity, he repeated his earlier demands, this time through text messaging. In our exchange, I was able to determine that his background wasn’t a fit, so I thanked him for his time and asked if he could confidentially refer anyone. He responded by calling me a “god-awful recruiter.” I know that I’m a pretty good recruiter, and was fairly certain that he was a miserable person (garbage truck), but I held off on sharing those opinions with him. Instead, I just backed away, recalling “The Law of the Garbage Truck.” I wasn’t going to spend any more mental energy on him than I already had, and I surely wasn’t going to dump his garbage on someone else. Furthermore, I knew that my faith in humanity would soon be restored when I visited the gym over the lunch hour for my daily workout. Knowing that there are already too many garbage trucks wandering around out there, I try to be just the opposite, and the gym gives me a place to put that effort into practice. Because I appreciate friendly, positive people, I try to be one myself. I attempt to learn the names of the people I routinely see, like the front desk people, custodian and regular members, and I try to make connections with those who are receptive. And, I try to do that all with a smile, regardless of how I feel, even if I’m still stinging from a garbage truck collision. Per usual, the gym atmosphere didn’t disappoint. I exchanged pleasantries with people who expect me to be there at the same time almost every day, and enjoyed conversations that completely erased the garbage truck from my memory. Getting older has taught me that kindness pays dividends, and that even when it can’t save you from garbage truck collisions, it can certainly make them easier to recover from. Take the time to create a refuge of kindness that you can rely on when something like a garbage truck threatens to ruin your day. It’s worth the effort.