I feel sorry when people
rush past old people and people with children to deplane or at immigration counters
cannot think of offering the first auto to someone with a lot of stuff or a child
cannot let someone with just one item to bill at the check out counter to go first while waiting with a cartload of purchases.
These gestures cost a few extra minutes but cause so much gentileness to go around in the world.
A simple act of kindness has such a cascading effect in making the world a better place to live in.
Whenever I am in such situations I always remember how good I felt when I needed the favour and somebody let me pass before them and it feels good to be able to pass on the favour to someone else.
Perhaps these other people have never had such kindnesses shown to them? And that is why I feel so sorry for them.
rush past old people and people with children to deplane or at immigration counters
cannot think of offering the first auto to someone with a lot of stuff or a child
cannot let someone with just one item to bill at the check out counter to go first while waiting with a cartload of purchases.
These gestures cost a few extra minutes but cause so much gentileness to go around in the world.
A simple act of kindness has such a cascading effect in making the world a better place to live in.
Whenever I am in such situations I always remember how good I felt when I needed the favour and somebody let me pass before them and it feels good to be able to pass on the favour to someone else.
Perhaps these other people have never had such kindnesses shown to them? And that is why I feel so sorry for them.
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:(
What is happening to the world, to people, to us?!
I guess there is something missing in our culture. I understand these kind of courtesies are "taught" to children in other countries. I think it was Tagore who in one of his short stories paints the following scene: At the station platform a man walking in front on the streets or the station with a wife struggling behind him with a child in hand and also carrying a bag.And Tagore adds that it neither occured to the woman to tell the man to help nor did it occur to the man to help her.
What kind of behaviour can you expect from these people?
I agree.
Apart from failure of our education system, I think it has to do how we have marginalized religion in our life. I have seen that kids going to church Sunday schools are lot better people than rest (more often than not)
Lack of compassion and consideration has something to do with our obsession with Pseudo Secularism. I dont think there is anything wrong with telling a kid "God will like it , if you helped others" but somehow people just dont.
Well, in India we have this constant imbalance between available resources and people in need. I guess it's been imbibed in us to be "smart" to survive... you need to be fast to get into a moving bus, else end up standing amid perverse men. I'm always the last girl to get into a bus/train/elevator, pushed aside in queues...and I'm advised to act "street smart" and fight it out. It's a mad survival of the fittest!
As an aside, I've been addicted to all your posts! Your thoughts/views are so eerily similar to mine! And the Wodehousian style shines through :)