Two things triggered this line of thinking for me:

1. Hearing about the swimmers who helped to save their friend from a shark attack in San Diego last month
2. Watching the series “Station Eleven” (based on the novel by Emily St. John Mandel)

     In the shark attack, two men—in the same ocean-swimming group as the attacked swimmer— responded to his cries for help by swimming toward their friend and the attacking shark. One was an untrained rescuer who said on CBC he was “going on instinct.” The second was a trained ocean lifeguard who had been taught, like all first responders, not to enter an unsafe area…yet also went to assist. Along with another swimmer and a surfer, they were able to get the victim to safety and he survived the attack. The shark had left the area, and no one else was hurt.
     In the series (the book was written in 2014 and I’m watching on CBC Gem), a deadly global pandemic occurs, and in today’s episode, a plane is left on the tarmac at an airport because the people inside have been exposed to the disease. When one character expresses his distress at leaving them to die, another character asks, would you die for a stranger?

I've been thinking about spies. Likely (spoiler alert) because of Elizabeth from the Thursday Murder Club series (see book review, July 6 2024). The only true spy that I've ever met was a friend's grandmother, who apparently was a spy in WW2, but I didn't know that at the time I met her and therefore couldn't ask her about it. On second thought, maybe she isn't the only spy I've ever met; by definition, I shouldn't be able to tell, right?