As the year winds down to find us surrounded by daily news of mankind apparently going downhill, both at home and abroad, one can easily begin to harbour feelings of despair. It’s forbidding and, it seems, unending. One way to counteract that is to pay attention to simple encounters in everyday life – some very subtle, some looming large – that come to us daily, showcasing the instances of uplift around us.
Last week, the CBS television programme ‘Sunday Morning’ carried a segment featuring a wealthy man in Kansas City, Missouri, who has taken to giving away $100,000 to random strangers at Christmas time. This year, in the wake of the problems with police/community turmoil in America, he deputized several police officers in Kansas City to hand out the money. In the CBS segment we see police officers pulling over citizens and instead of asking for ID, they’re saying, “Here’s an anonymous present for you.” while handing them a US$100 bill.
The officers often selected people with older cars in need of repairs on the assumption that those drivers really needed the money, and they were usually right. One woman said, “You saved my Christmas. I wasn’t going to be able to buy my kids anything.” Many people were moved to tears. As to why he did it, the anonymous Santa said, “Joy. I wanted to bring some joy to people in need, and I also saw this as bringing some joy to the policemen; things have been rough for them lately.” In many cases, the people who got the surprise money ended up becoming excited and hugging the officers. One woman buried her face in her hands yelling, “Oh my God, no. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
Cruising the web for details on this story, I saw the report of a similar anonymous giver who was making the season bright for some cash-strapped shoppers in Boston by shelling out thousands of dollars to wipe out all the layaway balances at two Toys “R” Us stores in nearby Auburn and Framingham, 10 days before Christmas. Two days prior, another anonymous person settled 150 layaway accounts at the Toys “R” Us in Bellingham, Mass., with a $20,000 donation. The store’s manager told CBS, “Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of these acts of good will. It’s heart-warming every time.” Heart-warming, indeed; uplift.
Coming from town one afternoon, a red light stops me at the junction of Sandy Babb Street and Vlissengen Road. Some ten feet in front of me are two horses: the female is nibbling in the grass on the parapet to the right, but the male horse is standing bang in the middle of the road – I kid you not – preening himself, completely oblivious to anything but himself. He’s leaning over nibbling at his tail, or reaching up and shaking his mane, twisting and turning, happily; one would think he was at home on a farm instead of a city street. I was transfixed watching him.
As the traffic moved on around him, Mr Horse calmly kept up his posing, and Mrs Horse kept on chewing grass – the natural world in full flower, or horse.
I’m at Timehri, waiting for a passenger at the arrivals exit. It’s Christmas, so Andrew Tyndall, on pan, and Earl Paul on keyboard, are putting out some stirring Christmas melodies for arrivals.
The place is jammed with folks standing there who have come to meet folks. On the far side, I suddenly notice one young lady who is bumping gently to the music (it was actually Lord Kitchener’s ‘Pan in A Minor’; a classic) and she’s holding up a hand-lettered sign. Right away, I’m curious. I move a little closer.
The sign says, “Welcome home sister, Reyan” and it has a simple drawing of two people holding hands. Now the letters were somewhat rough, and the drawing was basic, but can you image the lift it will be for her sister for that to be the first thing she encounters as she exits the terminal? If I was Reyan, I would probably bus’ a cry. Beautiful.
Several days after the horse-showing-off incident, I’m coming up Sandy Babb again, this time from the east, and I stop at the Vlissengen light. I look to my left and five feet from me there is a plant about five feet tall growing in a narrow gap where the asphalt meets the sidewalk.
It can’t be more than a couple inches of space, but somehow a seed from Mother Nature ended up in that opening, and we now have a beautiful light-green shrub, tended by no one, growing happily in a spot where nothing is expected to grow. Amazing. Every time I pass the junction now, I slow down and give the plant a “right”; I swear it bobs in reply, but it could be just the breeze. I love it.
As I write this, I just saw a letter in Stabroek News from a man in a rage over the behaviour of people in town after that downpour two days before Christmas, and the flooding.
I was down there brackling Regent Street (traffic at a crawl), and Quamina (a swimming pool), and Kitty (gridlock), and there were a few irritable people, yes, but I also saw several motorists stopping to let others out; I saw people slowing down not to splash pedestrians; we were parking in a tight spot on Merriman and a guy sitting in the back of a nearby van was directing us, entering and leaving.
In fact, in those two hours I was in town I saw more courtesy from both drivers and pedestrians than I would ordinarily see in a month. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, but some folks were definitely being kind to some folks.
Certainly the degraded conditions exist, but the examples above demonstrate the point that from looking at the environment of our planet with an open mind one can also see the enduring beauty of the animals in our natural world; family love on open display in public; life forcing its way through a crack in a Georgetown street; and the concern of one human being for another in America as well as GT – all in the space of one week – just from looking.
