Earlier toady, I witnessed the most beautiful act of loving kindness. I was sitting in a Victoria line train when a woman entered the coach and asked people to help her with some money. Clearly, the woman was not in a good state. She looked pale and exhausted.
The usual situation unfolded – one that is probably best described as collective neglect fused with individual embarassment about the same. No one turned one’s attention towards the woman. Some stared at the floor, others onto their phones. The ones with their 160 pounds Airpods pretended not having noticed the woman’s plea for help.
Then I see how a little girl, probably 6 years old, who sat next to her mum on the opposite side, started searching for something in her small backpack. She digged up a shiny-blue children’s wallet in the shape of a shell. The girl took out a coin, got up and followed the woman, who in the meantime had walked passed us. The girl’s mum looked worried, as her daughter got up, but when realising what her daughter was about to do, did not call her back. The girl reached the woman, gave her the coin. The scene drove tears into my eyes. The woman whose face had been marked by sorrows and pain started smiling at the girl and thanked her for her help.
The scene moved me deeply, pressed me into my seat. I had just observed how a six year old acted out the essence of our existence here on this planet. This girl taught all of us in this train a lesson in compassion, a lesson in love in its true sense. I am wondering where and why in life we seem to lose this connection to one another. Do we really lose it or does it just get hidden underneath all our day-to-day worries and egoic life styles? At the next stop, I had to get off the tube. Before leaving the train, my eyes met the eyes of the girl’s mum. The only thing I was capable of saying was: “She is a good girl”. The mum nodded and smiled.