There is always something more to it
This is a true story – it happened this very afternoon.
We are in one of the World’s largest cities, in a neighborhood with many different people, and on the 4th floor on a staircase in a long block of flats, two elderly people are living next door to each other. Let’s call them Maria and Peter.
Maria is a lady in her late 80s. She has trouble walking, and she often needs help with shopping – then she asks her neighbor, Peter, a “young” man with a couple of years less life experience and in a seemingly eternal cancer treatment that makes him tired and weak, to help her out. The two then go to a supermarket or whatever type of shop is needed, do the shopping together and help each other carrying home the goods.
Well, this Tuesday afternoon, Peter noticed a couple of shopping bags standing in front of Maria’s door on the staircase. He went there, knocked on the door – and then again, more powerfully this time, as her hearing isn’t the best. But she wasn’t there. And the door was locked.
The bags were her regular, solid shopping bags – with her shoppings in them and her purse and keys simply dropped on the top. But Maria herself was nowhere to see.
What could have happened? How could she disappear? Maybe she was out there somewhere, needing help?
Worries piled up in his mind and he quickly decided to go out and search for her, trying to prepare himself mentally for anything that could have happened. He looked around in front of the house, went to the nearest supermarket while following their regular path, then the next one, and then he took a long walk around to all the places he could imagine that she would go – all the places they would normally visit on their shopping trips.
When he finally gave up and went home – she was there! She had just arrived, and they met at the main entrance. But where had she been – he had looked all over for her?
Well, can you imagine: Maria, who can hardly walk and only sometimes is able to carry her shopping bags home without help – she had noticed another old lady out there in the streets, needing help.
That other lady was missing an arm and had tried to carry home a shopping bag, but it had dropped out of her hand, and now she was struggling to getting hold of the goods and picking up the bag, without much success.
So, our hero, Maria, made a quick decision to rush, as much as that was possible for her, to help the other lady. She didn’t know her, just saw the need for help and reacted upon it.
It had turned out to be too difficult for both of them. The bag was heavy, and none of them were able to lift it up and carry it anywhere. The other lady had been close to giving up completely, had started crying and needed some comforting words – and Maria promised her to find help. She just needed to stay there a bit and relax, and then someone would come and help, Maria promised.
Peter, our old, cancer-sick man, immediately went out to help the one-armed lady when he heard the story, after having helped his now very tired neighbor into her apartment with her own bags.
And so, both ladies got home with their shoppings, and all three of these old people could feel the importance of being there for each other – having people around them, even if totally strangers, to help when needed. Feel their lives.
Photo by Philippe Leone on Unsplash
