The Kindness of Strangers
6 minute read
A lovely thing happened to me last week. I had just paid for my parking at a ticket machine in the Beacon Hospital, where I’d taken my mother to see her oncologist, and I was about to head to my car when the woman standing behind me called my name. I turned but didn’t recognise her. She apologised and explained: “I follow you on Heyday and I think you're amazing.” I’m pretty sure my hand went automatically to my heart as I thanked her, because it was such an incredible thing to hear – from a friend let alone a total stranger – and I was so moved by it.
Hopefully, she’s reading this article today and I can thank her again. Firstly, because my reaction was hidden behind a mask so she may not have realised how happy her comment made me. Secondly, because those kind, kind words could not have come at a better time. Hospital appointments with my mother can be tiring and stressful; not always but often. More than this though, the previous day I had been at a really low ebb; feeling like a freelance failure, believing the worst things I think about myself, and struggling to embrace any of the confidence, purposefulness and positivity I try to channel into my work for Heyday.
To shine a lighter lens on it, I spent that previous day looking and feeling like Julia from Motherland on that first day she works from home after quitting her job; when she’s caught out buried beneath the bedclothes wearing some kind of pyjama-tracksuit hybrid by her cleaner, then tries desperately to convince the woman (well herself, really) that she is in fact working from home now and running her own PR company – not sleeping, hiding or avoiding. When I watched this scene the other night, my face flushed, it was so true to type.
“There’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.” So said American artist Scott Adams. I’ve never felt this to be more true than I did that day at the Beacon. Why is it that receiving a few generous words from somebody you’ve never met before can impact your mood more mightily than Donald Trump’s second-term defeat? I suppose it’s the utter guilelessness of the scenario. A stranger has no agenda, nothing to gain from paying you a compliment, and no responsibility to make you feel better about yourself (as our partners and families often feel they do). There’s also no tangible dividend to be gained from the act. Plus, it takes a certain kind of confidence, and bravery. Isn’t it a strange reflection of the world we live in that confronting a stranger with kindness can be an intimidating prospect?
An article in The New York Times last year referenced a book called Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter...But Really Do, which I recently ordered, probably out of some existential need to be more prepared for the return to a post-lockdown life. Written by a psychologist and journalist, together these women examine the science of casual connections and reveal the surprising impact that they can have on our physical and mental health. They write: “Consequential strangers anchor us in the world and give us a sense of being plugged into something larger. They also enhance and enrich our lives and offer us opportunities for novel experiences and information that is beyond the purview of our inner circles.”
This instantly reminded me of an encounter I had with an elderly gentleman in Lidl a few weeks ago. He made a joke about the volume of shopping in my trolley, and we started talking. In the following ten minutes or so, I learned he was 93 years old (when I told him he didn’t look his age, he proudly informed me he was often told this), and that he had been a widow for 27 years. He told me about his two sons, one of whom lives in the US, and his beautiful daughter; his six grandchildren; his brother, who died at age 87 (“Just a baby!” this gentleman joked); and how he still looked forward to getting out of bed every morning. He was vibrant and optimistic and funny and sweet, shaking my hand before we both moved on to finish our shopping and thanking me for the chat.
He made my morning more interesting and more cheerful. He told me his favourite meal of the day is breakfast; so is mine. In that one silly, inconsequential detail, I felt a connection with this stranger twice my age. We smiled conspiratorially, as if the beauty of a good breakfast was something only he and I fully understood. This charming nonagenarian changed the tenor of my day. I walked away feeling there was so much life left to be lived; as a midlifer I had, in this gentleman’s mind, decades of possibilities, opportunities and delicious breakfasts ahead of me. He gave me perspective, and no matter how many times my mother might tell me I have it all ahead of me, her voice has become as meaningful as the sound the radio makes when it’s between channels. This is not because her words are less worthwhile, but simply because they are as familiar and frequent as the bells of The Angelus in our house.
Human connection has been the biggest casualty of the stay-at-home instructions forced on us by the pandemic, and it’s only just struck me that this loss has involved far more than the suspension of dinner dates with friends and water-cooler conversations with colleagues. It’s as much about the absence of unexpected encounters and serendipitous sightings, like the one I was on the receiving end of at the Beacon last week, as it is about unbreakable bonds.
In The New York Times article mentioned, a research psychologist is quoted as saying: “The greater the number of weaker ties [in a person’s life], the stronger the association with positive feelings and fewer depressed feelings. It’s clearly not the case that close ties are all that older adults need.”
I would never have considered a random kind word from a stranger, or the passing of pleasantries with someone unknown to me, as a form of emotional support, but that’s exactly what they are. It’s simply taken me a pandemic to realise it.
Now that I think back, after my first redundancy in 2012, it was the arbitrary encounters with other dog walkers each morning that helped me face the emptiness of the day ahead. It was the first time I hadn’t spent every weekday working in an office 9-5, and I felt completely dislocated. But in my local park, I experienced a sense of community once again, if only for an hour each day, and it helped.
In Tenessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche Bubois declares, “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.” If the Covid-19 crisis has crystallised anything, it’s that we all rely on the kindness of strangers; we just didn’t know it before. I’m going to take this newfound knowledge and I plan to apply it virtually as well as IRL, because social media could do with a little more of this arbitrary goodwill. As American Democrat Bob Kerrey put it: “Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.” It’s so easy to convince ourselves that making a difference in life is difficult if we’re not a politician or philanthropist or environmentalist, but in truth, it’s as simple as paying a compliment to someone you meet in a carpark…
Marie Kelly, June 2021
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