Category: Life

The Kindness of Strangers

It was already very late into the evening when we navigated through the German town of Stendhal last summer. When the telephone collapsed and the printed map, as if on purpose, showed us only the major streets and nothing nearby. No navigation. Both mobiles off. Just the drizzle and two small kids at the back of the car who really wanted to be stretching their feet in the warm beds after a long drive from Antwerp. We had one scare already when we got stuck in the queues for miles and after an hour our gears refused to cooperate and we were lucky to steer over to the hard shoulder of the motorway. My husband, unable to engage any gear at all and without any working phone, started to panic. Then he bent down and moved the clutch with his hand. This worked, but we were still scared as we carried on driving – confident at that stage that we would find our destination.

Stendhal greeted us with almost empty roads. No human in site, shops put to rest for the night, and no petrol station to stop by or a taxi driver to talk to and a detour around the city because of roadworks that completely took us off course and messed up the organization of the town that I had in my head. There must be a way of figuring out where we we staying, I thought to myself, trying not to lose hope just yet even though I was increasingly getting agitated and restless. The children’s tension mounted and then it broke out with joy as a Burger King stood there lit like a lighthouse in the stormy sea. We parked the car and checked if there was anyone in. We saw people moving but they could not see us. The doors were shut. We were searching for alternatives in our head. We had none. If it was about petrol, we could walk there. No problem. If it was about distance, we could call a taxi, but it was primarily about our lack of direction and no one who we could communicate with. There was no one to whom we could have talked to, until of course there was.

We spotted two people who had just walked out through the back door of the Burger King in a joyful and chatty mood. Did we just miss them? Were we too late? We ran to them for rescue and we explained our predicament. They glanced at our kids and willingly typed the address of our accommodation into their smartphones. We still couldn’t navigate it as all the mobiles seemed to refuse to cooperate with us that evening. As if we meant to talk for a bit longer and learn where we were all from. And so we’ve learnt that they were from Syria and they’ve been settling down there slowly, and they asked for our origin and whereabouts and we prayed together for the phone to give us the direction that it refused to give. Nothing was changing, the postcodes were not accepted, the network circulated in a loop. We grew in frustration and we almost resigned to spend the night at the carpark when all of a sudden a third person came out of the Burger King, attentive and quick, just in a few seconds asked us what has happened and without hesitation took the postcode and typed it into his car’s navigation. ‘No problem. I will drive you there.’ – he said. We couldn’t believe it. He was so quick to help. What’s your name, I asked: ‘Hadi’. He said. Where are you from? Syria. I smiled. A long time ago I was dreaming of taking a Syrian family to safety and it was a person from Syria who took us to safety. Maybe God takes into account good intentions, too, I thought to myself, while we reached our destination being guided by Hadi.

Thank you, Hadi. :)

Living well

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“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

 

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Creative individuals

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“Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. Creative individuals don’t have to be dragged out of bed; they are eager to start the day. This is not because they are cheerful, enthusiastic types. Nor do they necessarily have something exciting to do. But they believe that there is something meaningful to accomplish each day, and they can’t wait to get started on it. Most of us don’t feel our actions are that meaningful. Yet everyone can discover at least one thing every day that is worth waking up for. It could be meeting a certain person, shopping for a special item, potting a plant, cleaning the office desk, writing a letter, trying on a new dress. It is easier if each night before falling asleep, you review the next day and choose a particular task that, compared to the rest of the day, should be relatively interesting and exciting. Then next morning, open your eyes and visualize the chosen event—play it out briefly in your mind, like an inner videotape, until you can hardly wait to get dressed and get going. It does not matter if at first the goals are trivial and not that interesting. The important thing is to take the easy first steps until you master the habit, and then slowly work up to more complex goals. Eventually most of the day should consist of tasks you look forward to, until you feel that getting up in the morning is a privilege, not a chore.”

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Climb selflessly

“To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, he’s unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be “here”. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it *is* all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Walking

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“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors…disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking