The kindness of strangers

G is now doing a course on a Thursday night. I think it is on Developing World Economics (I do normally pay more attention that this and think I will probably end up having to follow the syllabus as well). Anyway, I think that officially makes Thursday nights “meat night”. Hurrah! G doesn’t object to me eating meat, but as I don’t normally do the cooking now, I don’t eat meat anywhere near as often as I used to. I am sure there is some strange imbalance between what G is studying and me seeing it as an opportunity to be a carnivore.

Anyway, last night I watched “Playing the Part”, which was about Denise Welch finding out what it is like to be a teacher. I have never had much of an urge to be a teacher, but I certainly don’t envy those who are. Two particular things struck me though. First was that, whilst I am sure some of the pupils were troublesome, they were all in their own way quite decent and were rather different to the image we are so often shown in the media. Second was how kind they were when Denise went to pieces a couple of times. They sat there and patiently waited for her to return and the teachers encouraged her to face the pupils by explaining how they would support her – and they did.

It reminded me that one of the things that I find hard to deal with is when people are kind. It just has the ability to really want to make me cry. It does when people are kind to me, but even more so when I see someone being kind to someone else. Although it makes me want to cry, it’s not a sentimental thing, it’s a real gut reaction to seeing someone reach out to help another person and I just find that a bit overwhelming. I have no idea why that is the case, but kindness is something I find hard to see.