Deliberate, Directed and Non-Random Acts of Kindness

My husband and I are just back from a London theatre trip to see Les Miserables. We don’t really do spontaneous, but this came close. Sometimes you just need a break from working from home, time away from a laptop that is too close to leave alone.

We did the whole tourist turn with open topped buses and river cruises and picked up the previously unknown information tour guides thought we might like to know. It was a flurry of here and there and posing for pictures in front of, or beside, this statue or that blue circle on the wall that told you who lived there once upon a time. Yes, we did bits of London.

I lived there once for two years and my go-to place was always Covent Garden, Just three stops on the Piccadilly line from where our hotel was. There’s a church there, St Paul’s. Not the St Paul’s Cathedral St Paul’s, but something smaller, less Princess Di wedding St Paul. This one is known as ‘The Actor’s Church’, and features panels all around the walls commemorating those in the entertainment business.

My husband likes to search out the plaque for Peter O’Toole, sit beneath it and quote lines from his films. There was an interview once where the great man was asked what he wanted to be remembered for. For being Lawrence of Arabia, perhaps? It sticks in my memory, that film, first date, four hours long, dodgy stomach and thick black coffee in the interval, at Eden Court in Inverness.

No. He wanted to be remembered for being kind. That was what mattered. My husband was telling me the story. I shouldn’t have asked the inevitable question, but I did. ‘Am I kind?’ I asked, to which he answered, ‘You try to be.’

So, kindness. In all the tourist information passing into me, what I really learned was that London folk are kind. Let me tell you three stand out ‘kind’ moments.

Les Miserables. That might have been descriptive of how I was feeling about the theatre show - vaguely miserable. I’d reluctantly swapped jeans for a dress, trainers for shoes and my rucksack for a proper handbag. I had glammed up. There was a queue to get in – and this is where the kindness stepped in. A kind usher saw the walking stick in Joe’s hand. She knew he was struggling and took us through a side door to avoid the queue. There were stairs. Lots of stairs. Lots. If this had been the top layer of Celtic Park football club, my husband might have flown up them. She stayed with us throughout the journey and saw us settled in our seats. She told us that they were her favourite seats because there was an uninterrupted view – two very large ladies sat in front of us so it didn’t quite work out like that. She promised to check on us at the interval, and when she did, she happily went off to get us ice-creams. She was so lovely. I wanted to take her home with me.

The Underground. We were heading to a part of London called Little Venice. The Grand Union Canal that flows through Little Venice goes on to flow through the village of Crick on the Northamptonshire border where I grew up. The plan was for a boat ride to Camden Marrket. We arrived at the underground stop, Warwick Avenue. You have seen the movie, yes? Two lovers on a train. The train stops and the doors open. He gets out – slowly. Before she can get out, the doors close and the train pulls away. She is left pounding the door and wailing, ‘Noooo.’ Then kindness stepped in. A passenger calmly told me what to do next – get off at the next stop and press the information button and someone would help me. There was a conversation between two stations, between two station people working out how to reunite my husband and I. It may interest you to know that I wasn’t immediately missed. My husband turned around at the top of the escalator to discover I wasn’t there. The man manning the exit gates said, ‘You look like you’ve lost something, sir.’ I don’t think he was expecting the answer, ‘Yes, I have lost my wife.’ Well, a one stop back the way and we found each other.

Heathrow Airport. Just because you can download a boarding pass on a smart phone doesn’t mean that you should, certainly not if you are not tech savvy. We were checking in the luggage self-service. An airport worker assured us that we didn’t need anything printed off, we just had to scan the code from the phone. Eh? Oh right. Just scan it. The airport man was busy printing off boarding passes from a queue of people and two other airport people were holding cups of coffee and catching up with gossip. Kindness stepped in, six foot three of him, young and quite good looking. He was a passenger checking in his own cases. He saw the rabbit-in-the-headlights look on our faces and he started to talk us through what we need to do, then seeing us struggling to peel back the sticky labels for the suitcases, he did it for us. He was patient. He might have been minding his own parents or something. So incredibly kind.

There were so many times people helped us throughout our stay – people on buses giving up seats, or on the underground, carrying suitcases for us up and down steps. It was one kindness after another, and none of them grudgingly offering help.

We talk often about the mess the country is in and read the negative posts on Facebook and we come to believe that it’s a cruel world out there. Maybe it’s not ‘we’, just ‘me’. And complaints spill from lips and the world takes on a darker colour. But…this week I have been shown a kinder world.

I think that when we are kind to one another there is a ‘ready-brek’ glow that embraces us. We feel good inside that we helped someone. I also think that too often we are not given the opportunity to help because people insist stubbornly that they have got it. They can do this. And maybe they can. But sometimes…sometimes we rob someone of the chance to help and receive the blessing that comes from helping another person.

Kindness. Sometimes it is not the random acts of kindness that we need. The very nature of randomness is that it hits some people and misses others. It is the deliberate and directed acts of kindness that make a difference and tell us that the world really is beautiful.