How about a quick but really nice story?
I spent a great deal of my morning today running pre-Pesach errands up and down Bathurst Street in torrential rains. I swear that I saw raccoons and squirrels marching two by two in midtown in search of an ark, that's how bad the weather was. Drivers were in no mood to slow down and believe me, I saw more than one poor pedestrian get soaked by discourteous cars and buses. It was an all-around icky early morning.
And then I witnessed the best of this city.
As I approached Bathurst and St. Clair, I saw a cab (yes a cab!) pull over to the side of the road in order to disembark its passenger. Drivers, angry at the lane blockage, honked and gesticulated in nasty ways. The cabbie ignored it all and adamantly refused to allow his senior-citizen female passenger to open her own door. Instead, he got out of his driver's seat in the teeming rain, ran around to the curbside, opened the back passenger-side door for the woman, and walked her to her destination with an umbrella. It was a small but very distinct act of goodwill and kindness.
There are so much misery and nastiness these days that sometimes I forget that so many are just decent people at heart. We often forget that we are all responsible for each other and at times a little reminder of how acts of love and kindness can truly repair the world is really in order.
This morning, in the rains and windswept streets of Toronto, I witnessed a small gesture of Tikkun Olam, the reparation of the world. I won't soon forget it.
No comments:
Post a Comment