An Act of Kindness

Acts of kindness, I have come to realise, are not entirely the province of the pious and the virtuous. Ordinary people routinely carry out acts of kindness simply through a desire to be helpful to those who may be in need of help. I was recently a pleasantly surprised but immensely grateful beneficiary of just such an act of kindness whilst travelling on my local train. On my journeys on my local train I often avail myself of the free newspaper that, these days, is widely available to passengers. I am particularly fond of whiling away my journey time by grappling with Soduku puzzles. But despite my fondness for Soduku, I do not always have the foresight to equip myself with the one implement that is indispensable when working with Soduku : a pen. Consequently, I often find myself attempting to solve a Soduku puzzle in my head rather than on paper, - by working out the appropriate square where a particular number needs to be placed and then retaining the position of that square in my mind. I should add that when exercising my mind in this way over a Soduku, I often find myself moving my fingers along the rows and columns of the puzzle to determine the right square for the right digit, which of course is the key for the solution of a Soduku puzzle. My finger movements, in a sense, betray the mental processes that I am engaged in. And indeed they did just that the other day, when I was on the train engrossed in mentally solving the Soduku challenge contained in my copy of the local free paper. I was scarcely aware of my finger moving back and forth across the Soduku grid in front of me but unknown to me, it did not escape the attention of a young lady who was sitting opposite me, reading a book. She might have been intrigued by my strange antics but she quickly realised the predicament that I was in. She was clearly a Good Samaritan who wouldn’t walk by on the other side in a biblical sense and realising that I was in want of a pen to do my Soduku puzzle, decided to come to my aid. Rummaging into her handbag, she found a pen and held it out to me with a charming smile that invited me to use it. It was an invitation that took me by surprise. I was momentarily overwhelmed and humbled by this act of heart-warming kindness, which was as unexpected as it was spontaneous. I was only too eager of course, to accept her invitation but I like to think that even in my excitement at obtaining a much needed pen, I accepted her kind offer with a graciousness that matched her generosity. Having now been provided with a much needed pen, I was able to make rapid progress with my Soduku and even managed to finish it before arriving at my destination. It meant of course that I was able give the pen back to my benefactor and thank her profusely, although I am quite sure she would not have thought that a profusion of thanks on my part were necessary. She seemed to me to be one of those genuinely kind hearted souls that one meets infrequently but sufficiently regularly to serve as a constant reminder that kindness is by no means at a premium but abounds in the hearts of ordinary men and women. Indeed, just as it is often ordinary men and women who carry out extraordinary acts of courage and bravery, it seems to me that it is similarly ordinary men and women that carry out extraordinary acts of kindness. This lady’s kindness was extraordinary not perhaps in its enormity but certainly in its spontaneity. If kindness were measured simply on some scale of generosity, then this lady’s kindness to me might not be considered particularly out of the ordinary but kind acts are more than testimonials to munificence. On occasion they are an expression of a nature that is moved by an irrepressible desire to aid those in need, however small that need may be. Such acts of instinctive altruism become, in the enormity of their compassion, irrespective of the modesty of their largess, acts of kindness that may be perceived as truly extraordinary. The alacrity with which this lady came to my aid when I was in need, was just such an act of extraordinary kindness. PermalinkPe

Unexpected Acts of Kindness

In a world which is increasingly notorious for being uncaring, there occur every now then, extraordinary acts of kindness which reaffirm one’s faith in the decency and generosity of ordinary men and women. One such act of kindness recently came my way on my recent visit to Scotland. I was attending a regimental reunion in the little town of Bathgate in Scotland. I arrived at Bathgate by train at what must be, for Bathgate, an ungodly hour of 7 P.M. The hotel that I was heading for was a good three or four miles from the station and was clearly to be reached by a taxi, - a bus service being non-existent. I made my way to the cab rank outside the station only to find it completely devoid of cabs. A couple of men and young girl were already there ahead of me, obviously waiting for a taxi to arrive. After waiting in vain for five minutes or so with no sign of any vehicle, let alone a taxi in the vicinity, I was on the verge of despair when I noticed that one of the men was speaking into his mobile. Suddenly fearful that the perhaps at this quaint rural Scottish railway station, a taxi might need to be ordered by a mobile rather than be awaited at the cab rank, I decided to ask the man on the mobile whether I too needed to phone for a taxi. It turned out that the man wasn’t phoning for a Taxi at all and as a local man he assured me that the cab rank operated in the normal way that all cab ranks did, except that we appeared to have arrived at at an inopportune time when there seemed to be a dearth of available cabs. In our shared frustration of prolonged waiting, we started a casual conversation to while away the time, in the course of which the man asked me if I had a long way to travel. When I gave him the name of the hotel that I was headed for, he remarked casually that it was on the way to the address that he and his friend were going to. After another, seemingly interminable wait of about 10 minutes, a taxi finally arrived and although I was resigned to this taxi not being for me but rather for the two men ahead of me in the queue, I was glad at least to have moved to the top of the queue. I only needed to wait now for the next taxi to arrive and indeed I might have done so, had it not been for the unexpected act of kindness that I received from the two men in front of me. Whereas I would have expected them simply to have got into the taxi and set off for their destination, they in fact did something that probably would not have occurred to me. They were clearly people of a much kinder disposition than I could ever have been and rather than leaving me to wait for the next taxi, they offered me a lift with their own taxi, since, as they explained, they would be going past the hotel that I was headed for and besides, it was unthinkable to them that I should have to wait another possible eternity in the cold for a taxi that probably might not arrive anytime soon. It was an offer that certainly appealed to me, - although had I been a man of principle I should have had none of it: it was something of an imposition on these two good men, albeit at their own invitation, to allow myself to intrude into their private taxi. Overwhelmed by their generosity, I attempted to show my gratitude by offering to share the taxi bill with them but they refused outright to countenance it. It was as though they personified the old cliche that doing a good deed is in itself an ample reward. Humbled as I was by their innate decency, I climbed into the taxi and was naturally profuse in my thanks. Needless to say, that with two such eminently likeable people it turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant journey. We spoke about our plans for the evening: the regimental reunion in my case and a visit to a favourite pub in theirs. They dropped me off at my hotel and we said our good-byes, and once again they refused to accede to any of my repeated offers to pay. As the taxi pulled away, I found myself overcome with a profound sense of elation, - elation at having just experienced a moment that reaffirmed my faith in the basic decency of ordinary people, - a moment that made me realise once again that the world is not awash with wickedness, but rather the opposite, - that there is an abundance of good will and kindness amongst ordinary men and women, even though the proof of that premise may not reveal itself nearly as often as it deserves to do. This unexpected act of kindness buoyed me through the entire weekend that I spent in Bathgate and remained, for a long time thereafter, an uplifting source of warm comforting thoughts.