A Hostile World

After training in the morning recently I found myself in need of petrol. I stopped at my local station to fill up and drifted off into la la land while the 50 litre tank had to fill from the guts up.

As I contemplated the silent freeway a young lady pulled up to the bowser next to me. I paid little attention as I was now consumed with contemplation regarding my next session. However, I found my thoughts shifting very quickly to (what I thought must be) a fanciful notion of having to pay for the young woman’s petrol. I dismissed it and moved on to other random thoughts. About 2 minutes later and she was talking on her mobile phone, presumably to her boyfriend / husband saying she’d forgotten her wallet and had put petrol in her car. The voice on the other end clearly wasn’t going to help her out. Much loud stressed barking ensued.

I finished filling up and went to pay for my petrol. As I did so I told the attendant I was also paying for the young woman’s petrol as she seems to have forgot her wallet. It turned out to only be $10 anyway. I returned to my car but before I could get in the young lady ran over thanking me profusely.

“What can I do for you in return?” she said.

“Do something nice for somebody else if you get the chance. It’s good karma you know.”

Things became quite fascinating from then on as she proceeded to burst into streams of incomprehensible gibberish. Her eyes showed utter confusion and bewilderment that a stranger would be willing to help her and walk away without seeking repayment. She was, I can only describe it as, in a complete state of shock. Why?

The fact that someone had been unconditionally generous to her seemed completely foreign. She was conditioned for hardship and suffering. The generosity was such a relief to her profoundly stressed state that she completely lost the plot. I found this quite sad. That her world was devoid of generosity. That she lived predominantly in a hostile world. I only hope that she was so shocked that she then went and performed an act of genuine kindness for someone else and, by that very act alone, began to turn her world into a much nicer place where smiling replaced frowning and joy replaced hardship. So this Xmas pull your finger out, listen to your intuition and if it tells you to, perform an act of random kindness. You never know, it might just change your world and the world of someone else.