Humanitarian

Monday afternoon, when I got on to my train heading back to Birmingham, the carriage was quite full. I was standing next to a seat with a bag on it, but the lady who was sitting on the seat next to it looked like she didn't want to pick the bag up. She was spread across two seats and there was I standing there trying to find a seat. Why would you even do that?  What kind of a person you have to be to do that? She had the headphones on and was watching something on a tablet. I said to her, 'is anyone sitting here'. I'm sure she heard that but first pretended she couldn't hear me and said, "sorry", so I pointed at her bag and said, "is that yours?“. It looked and felt like she didn't want to answer that in an attempt to make me walk away and find a seat somewhere else. But because she behaved like that, I ensured she picked her bag and I sat in that seat. I could tell she wasn't pleased. She could have been a bit humanitarian (a person who seeks to promote human welfare). It's not like she'd paid for two seats but she wasn't concerned if that meant someone had to stand while she has her bag on a seat that's for humans not bags. Turned out most of the people in that carriage wanted to go Milton Keynes so in 25 minutes I moved to the left where there were two empty seats.

When I reached Birmingham, I was waiting for a taxi to pick me up and my phone rang. I knew it'd be the taxi driver who was showing 3 minutes away on the app. I answered the call and he said, 'buddy, which side of the station are you on?ʼ. I felt like saying, "where it's showing my location on the app, why are you even asking that?" but I was polite and humanitarian, and I explained where I was. Jagjit (the driver) picked me up and then started explaining why he'd called. He said he didn't want to go to the wrong side of the station which could have meant a lot of time would've been wasted. Then he asked me which way should he go. I said, "you can just follow the sat nav" (partly because I just wanted to relax and didn't want to explain the route) but Jagjit wanted to talk to me. So he started explaining that he uses waze which finds the best and fastest routes.

He wanted to show me the 3 different options it gave him for the routes. I said to him to choose the one he liked (how about that curve ball?). Then he started explaining how he always asks his customers about their route. I wasn't doing a good job at telling him I wasn't interested in knowing any of that. So I decided to keep listening and using some verbal nods here and there and that worked. But Jagjit kept finding things to explain to me and carried on talking. When we finally reached my place, I couldn't find the lever to pull open the car door because it was dark and the lever was black. That gave Jagjit another chance to explain how his other customers have to same issue and it would've been better if the lever was chrome. By that time I had found it and had opened the door but I stayed with the door open until he finished explaining because I didn't want to be rude or inhumanitarian.

This morning as I entered the train station a young man walked up to me and said, "buddy, do you have 20p for my bus fair", (what's with people calling me buddy? Or is that a new thing now?) he said that while showing me some change in his hand like he was my friend or someone I regularly interacted with. Does he do that to anyone whenever he's short of change? Or does he do that to pretend he's short of change for bus fair? I didn't have any change because I prefer contactless. So I proceeded contactlessly. But that made me think why would someone even do that? What must be going on? I could think of about 10 - 12 scenarios like : may be he forgot his wallet, may be he didn't like to use contactless on the bus, may be he didn't want to break his notes etc. etc. I'm not sure if that was humanitarian of me or not. But if you ever read my blog (that guy that asked for 20p)and if you didn't like it, I'm sorry you feel that way.

Today is the last day of 2019. This year has gone super fast. Tomorrow is another day and another year. We do so much for ourselves each year and we make new year's resolutions every year about ourselves. My new year's resolution will be to be humanitarian towards everyone. I like what Martin Luther King said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?".

I hope you liked my blogs this year. There's a lot more to come in 2020 and beyond so, "don't go anywhere".

Happy New year and thanks for reading buddies.. 

Adeel