I had occasion, yesterday, to assist the blind lady onto, off and onto a different train. She was effusively grateful, for missing the train at Reading would have meant missing her last bus home, and her son was still in London and unavailable for rescue purposes. So, as she was unable to run for her train (the one from Basingstoke having come in late), I ran on her behalf (in impractical shoes) and persuaded the station staff to hold the train while I fetched her onto it.
On my way home after this, I was musing about exactly what it was that drives me to interfere in other people’s business and try and help them. I remembered a quotation that I had on my bedroom wall as a teenager. It was rendered in beautiful calligraphy with an illuminated first letter, but my mother deemed it not perfect enough, so gave it to me.
The quotation was:
“I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” Stephan Grellet
For some reason this struck me at the time as a Good Way To Live and I remember it often, as if the words were written on the inside of my head.
One Comment
Basically the moral of the story is “be friendly”.