Life is busy and hectic and the world is huge it seems, regardless of the famous phrase. We’re rushing around and weaving in between people on the streets trying to get where we’re going, and we always have somewhere to be, somewhere to go. As polite as I try to be, I find that casually knocking elbows and jostling others while going through my everyday errands is not uncommon. Neither are the instances of when I hold open the door for someone, say ‘bless you’ to a stranger who has sneezed in line for coffee, or later tell the barista to have a wonderful day as I’m handed my change.
A lot of these moments don’t stick with me. I don’t think of these interactions as having as much substance as they actually do. I think the reason for that is because we don’t see the 7 or more billion people on this planet as individuals a lot of the time. They’re just the masses, the faceless, nameless people that populate this planet. There are situations or events that bring to light the individuality of the passerby’s, and I experienced one just recently.
This past Friday, I was flying to Barcelona, living the privileged life that study abroad offers, and stepping on to the plane, I could just feel something different. Something more. I shuffled my way slowly to my seat with my stuffed backpack and looked around at the several other people doing the same. A woman with a polka-dot scarf was tugging at her sweater, a bit too hot in the warm plane, her cheeks flushed a bit pink. She stood out to me as I connected to her as someone who is constantly warm and has rosy cheeks that never fade. The connection was brief, my following thoughts about her, fleeting, but there, though not totally uncommon.
Eventually, I got to my seat and was able to cram my backpack in the overhead bin.I rolled my shoulders as I made myself comfortable in my middle seat, well as comfortable as one could be. We had some time before we’d take off and I let my mind wander as I began to people watch. The people in the row to my left were laughing and talking loudly, passing around their phones showing one another the picture of their grandchildren and teaching one another how to zoom in on a picture. I could help but smile as I watched their merriment as they continued to show intrigued passengers in the rows in front and behind them. Soon even I had a phone in my hand, looking down at smiling kid with pigtail braids and a smile that had a missing tooth. I looked up to see the grandfather smiling just as wide as he looked at my reaction. My heart warmed immensely as I smiled and looked through the couple pictures, wondering how many strangers had seen photos of me that my family members had passed around.
Soon the flight attendants were coming around helping sort out the last minute carry-on baggage dilemmas, and one of the women came to our row as I was passing back the phone. She spoke quickly with the old man wrapped in a plaid scarf before taking the phone from me. She too looked through the pictures with elation, asking about his granddaughter and talking about her niece who had a similar missing tooth smile.
It was then as she returned to give the safety instructions that I decide to actually watch the regulations I knew very well. I mean honestly even if I’d never flown before, I’d think I know how to buckle a seatbelt, but hey you never know. I found myself watching the flight attendant as she mirrored her coworker and friend’s hand motions and instructions. She kept chuckling silently, sharing an inside joke with her friend as she absentmindedly, (I assume) continued with the directions she’s given probably thousands of times on thousands of flights all across Europe. It wasn’t hard to imagine myself in her place in a way. How many times in a presentation have I made eye contact with a friend and tried to keep my composure as I finished my spiel?
I was feeling this community on the plane, but the next moment was the catalyst that influenced me to write this article. As much as I was happy and content with the family-like energy that was in this domestic flight to Barcelona, I couldn’t help but just get the show on the road. Come on! Let’s get in the air! I’m ready for Barca! Let’s go! Finally, the plane began to move.
It was slowly building up speed and my mind was imaging the lives of the several people on the plane, zoning out while simultaneously wishing the jet engines weren’t so loud so the volume on my music wouldn’t be slowly causing deafness, when I heard a sharp intake of breath to my right. I turned to see the elderly woman beside me to have a hand covering her mouth and her face beet red, a tear resting on her eyelashes. It didn’t take a detective to see she was terrified of taking off and was also embarrassed of this fear.
Without much thought I grabbed her hand and squeezed it once, our fingers intertwining as she held on tightly. She exhaled heavily, eyes still squeezed shut as the wheels lifted from the ground. I awkwardly reached my left arm around to rub comfortingly on her arm as we continued to ascend, trying to imagine a warm bubble of happy energy encompassing her. Soon enough we were in the air, steady, and she squeezed my hand as she opened her eyes and thanked me. She held my hand as she fanned her overheated face with the emergency pamphlets and she explained that it was the taking off and landing that really struck fear into her heart. I told her to reach for my hand whenever she needed it, and while there wasn’t much turbulence, during a couple of turns, I found her squeezing the hand I had resting in between us.
The gesture didn’t seem huge to me until I realized how much comfort she took in it. How much my action truly changed her experience. And I’m not writing this article as a ‘hey look at me’, but more as a personal eye-opening experience. Because it was then that I thought, how often to I impact someone’s life? How often does my action or inaction change the direction, the importance, or the memory of someone’s life? How many people have I sat next to on a bus or saw through a glass window that I pass in and out of it without affecting anything? And how many do I impact for the better? For the worse?
The world is big when you think about numbers. There are billions of people that we will never meet. Billions we will never know the names of, never remember even. But what gives validity to the statement “it’s a small world after all” is how we treat the billions of people we do meet.
Each of these billions is an individual person, with thoughts and troubles and schedules and lives and backstories. They are as complex as we are and yet sometimes that goes unnoticed. But I challenge you to think of them as the individual human beings that they are. Go out of your way to help others. It doesn’t have to be big things, just random acts of kindness. Random acts of humanity have a much greater impact than what it may seem on the surface.
All in all, spread the word and start seeing the significance in our everyday interactions and make them and our world kinder. Let's focus on making the world a little bit smaller, a little bit more like a community.
