How acts of kindness, multiplied, how kindness is, “reproduced”, like by mitosis or meiosis??? Observations from the MRT trains, translated…
One day, my coworker, Sunny had completed her work requirements overseas, and came back to find work, she’d accompanied me with a visually impaired friend out to lunch.
As we alighted the trains, before we’d, prevented them from it, a row of people who were, seated stood up, to allow our friend and us to sit.
Recalling how ten years back, before “priority seats” gained popularity. The work unit I’d part-timed in had invited a visually impaired Taiwanese person who lived in the U.S. to teach about “directional action”, which entails using the canes, to prod around the environment, to make sure it’s safe, and get from this location to the next.
I was blessed enough, to watch as the lesson occurred, and what’s most moving to me, happened on the MRT trains.
He had on the dark shades, with the guiding canes, like he was, a fully blind person.
As we alighted the MRT, he’d steadily grabbed a hold of the seats. An elderly man used his gazes, to ask me to have my nearly completely blind instructor to sit down. He was so surprised, and turned the elderly down graciously, “I’m just blind, I can still stand! I can stand, and can walk on my own, do thank the elderly gentleman for me!”, his voice echoed throughout the quieted trains, almost every passenger onboard heard; I’d even heard a tiny voice that stated, “Wow, it’s so cool!” Back then, the instructor told me, “I’m just visually impaired, I’m not handicapped, I don’t need the priority seats!”
I’d told this to Sunny, she’d believed too, that the “seats should be saved for those who needed them”, and it didn’t matter if it were a priority seat or not.
As we chit chatted, Sunny suddenly noted how not far off, there was a young man who had a bag hung slanted downward, with his hand on the rings, dozing off. She’d gotten up, walked over to the young man, patted him on the shoulders, and told him to take her seat, that young man was very moved, and as he sat down, he’d, immediately, fallen asleep, and Sunny was very glad too, that she’d, let up the seats.
Turns out, although she was having a conversations with me, she’d still become, very attentive of the goings on in her environment, “I’d worried, that I’d not caught those who needed assistance, so I’d, rarely lowered my head to the cell phones on the MRTs………” I’d joked with her, “If there was the opportunity for me to write a recommendation letter for you, I’d put this scene in.” Because this is a quality, we’re, lacking right now, in the workforce.
I was, influenced by Sunny, and as I alighted the MRT, I’d started, paying attention to the needs of others around me.
One day, as the MRT stopped at a certain station, an elderly couple came in, the person sitting next to me and I both got up.
I had a lot of things with me, my backpack, my umbrella, my coat, my packed lunch, the newspapers from the MRT stations, they were all kept, on the corner of my seat, there was also a book I was reading, this time, I’d needed to, remove everything, I’d looked, a bit, defeated.
Later on, someone on the Priority Seats got off, the elderly woman said, “I’ll go over there to sit, you sit back down.” And, not long thereafter, the other person sitting in the priority seats got off too, and, she’d pulled on her husband to sit next to her, “The younger generations were kind enough to give us their seat, and we shouldn’t, take up theirs.”
In our L-shaped seating area, it’d become, the two elderly persons sitting in the priority seats, the two younger people in the regular seats, it’d looked, very, orderly.
That was on the way to work, and the scene on the MRT, opened up the beautiful beginning of a brand new day.
And so, this, is how kindness is multiplied, and reciprocated, because one act of kindness was noted, and, it’d, generated to two more, than more, and even more acts of kindness, and this is going to keep on, multiplying, because as people see someone does something kind for another, that would initiate their drive to help out too.