This is the spot, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where 5,000 people rallied spontaneously to free a man named Joshua Glover.

Glover was an escaped slave, whom US Marshals had arrested near Racine, Wisconsin and transported to the court house and prison that stood on this spot. As news of this spread, some 5,000 people showed up. They broke into the prison, freed Glover, and put him on a boat to Canada, where he’d be free.

It’s worth remembering that slavery in America was supported by the whole of the US government, and that the people who broke Joshua Glover out of jail were all law-breakers.

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Before going back to the mundane, please consider the people of Milwaukee and others like them; they were willing to break laws and risk imprisonment to do the right thing and free enslaved people. What do you suppose they thought about when contemplating such things?

These are all the farmers of one rural area, and they’ve all shown up – with their equipment – to harvest the fields of a farmer who had just died.

The ultimate safety net in human life is friends and family; no matter how much systems try to replace that, they cannot surpass it. The vast majority of neighbors and family members, once they see a clear and benevolent purpose – once they attain moral clarity – are both willing and eager to help.

In fact, our vocabularies have colorful phrases for this: stepping up, doing the right thing, pitching in, being a stand-up guy and so on.

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So, before going back to the mundane, put yourself in the position of one of these farmers. Consider all the little details that led up to an event like this; go through them slowly enough to feel them. Then imagine similar situations that would fit within your segment of the world.

This gentleman, in Dublin, Ireland, is retired and living on a pension. But he still wants to contribute to the world. And so, every day he prepares fifty cartons of curry and delivers them to the homeless and destitute of his city.

Until we are too infirm to do so, it seems that none of us is completely happy unless we’re contributing something to the world… doing something that makes the world a better place than it would have been without us.

To know that you’ve been a net positive force in the universe is a powerful source of satisfaction in any human life, and especially so as time diminishes one’s abilities.

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Now, before you go back to the mundane, think about your own old age, no matter how far away it may be: In what will you find satisfaction?

This husband and wife had been separated for four years, due to bureaucratic red tape. The two other women (one of whom is out of the frame, save for her hand) were friends from a church in Ft. Worth Texas. It was they who worked long and hard to make this moment happen.

The value of going to church has been much maligned in our time, but there is great value in it. Yes, there can be doctrinal issues, and doctrinal bullies, but the benefits are not to be overlooked… and I’m not referring to the belief aspects.

In church, people spend an hour per week, thinking about ultimate issues… about actually being good, about working for the good… about improving themselves and their neighbors. A great deal of good comes of this. Humans, after all, are tremendously capable creatures: when they try to help one another, they very often succeed.

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So, if you have a church or synagogue you like, make it a point to go: spend time thinking about goodness and love, about blessing your family and your neighbors. And if you think church is too problematic, start working on a replacement for it: a place that can bring people into weekly consideration of the most important aspects of life and the most important actions of life.

There is a beauty and dignity to actual, direct work. For the past forty years that has slipped away from the people of the West, being replaced with a desire for remote and virtual work. Still, physical work remains crucial: without it almost nothing would be grown, manufactured, delivered or repaired.

There is real beauty in doing a job well, even a simple job. It is our great loss that this form of beauty isn’t appreciated and is seldom discussed in the public square; even worse that it is considered of lower status.

But without work… without actual production… we die.

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Please, before going back to the mundane, examine how you look at work, and consider that it is the insertion of human creativity and energy into the world, overcoming entropy.

While this image speaks very well by itself, there’s still more to it.

There’s an old Jewish proverb that says this: He who helps his neighbor, blesses his neighbor, but he who adopts a child blesses God. That’s a powerful sentiment, and one worth remembering.

There are very few actions, perhaps none, that are more powerful than rescuing a child and giving them a healthy family environment in which to grow. People who stand to adopt children like this one should be respected as a default. They are taking upon themselves a job that is simultaneously immensely difficult and crucial to the future of our species.

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Please, before going back to the everyday mundane, spend some time with these thoughts.

Train stations are wonderful places to watch people. Each has purpose, each has a story, each has know joys, each has endured sorrows. If you can devote yourself to the task, you can see these things in the faces of the people who line up in front of you, or even just pass in front of you.

And if you try, you can easily imagine how the woman passing by might – had the circumstances of your lives been different – have been your sister, your wife, your aunt or a dear friend. The man passing by might have been a coworker, a hero of your youth, the corner grocer or your father’s friend.

If you can spend time with thoughts and impressions like these, you will be made better by them.

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So, next time you find yourself in a situation like this, take advantage of it. Grab a drink, or a sandwich, and soak these people in; consider that they could easily have been an important part of your life, and that you would have loved them with all your heart.

Not all businesses are strictly businesses; some are actually missions, like this one. Someone running this business has understood the deep power and necessity of reading books, and is doing their best to inject more of it into human life.

Read through the sign and consider how the words of each section were chosen… carefully and to reach specific goals… and with risks attached.

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Now, before going back to the mundane, please ask yourself what kind of mission business you’d enjoy running. What good would you be happy to birth into the world? How would you do it?

Every Christmas, the people living in this house place gifts on a tree in front, offering them to whomever needs them. And please note that they’ve considered the needs of the recipients and wrapped them in plastic, so they could take the ones they need.

“One does what one can do,” went an old line, and that’s precisely what is seen in this image. These people are doing what they can: with an emphasis on doing.

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Before going back to the mundane, please think a moment on what you are able to do – large or small makes no difference – then make a plan to do it. Acting changes us (and the world) in ways that mere talk cannot.

An elderly man, sadly, had a heart attack while shoveling his large driveway. So, after taking him to the hospital for treatment, these paramedics returned to his house and finished shoveling the driveway for him.

This is simply what normal humans do, presuming they have the liberty of doing so. People help people, and especially if the person needing the help suffers through no real fault of their own, as in this case.

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Before wading back into the mundane, please consider what types of obstacles might prevent people from taking actions like this one. Some of those restrictions (age, health, etc.) may not be fixable, but many others could be. And considering what could be improved in the world is a rich vein of thought.