The Kindness Of Strangers

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Tennessee Williams - 'A Streetcar named Desire

I thought I would share something with you, about the kindness of strangers.  I lived in London for a few years, a city which for many epitomises rudeness and ignorance, cold hearted and uncaring.  I would vehemently defend Londoners for having lived there and known those who live there too I have always posed that the reason Londoners don't speak to people that much is because the city is so full of tourists and so full of people from so many cultures they just don't know who will share their language and interests.  For this reason my theory states that Money is the Language of London.  You can see it in the many stores the markets and even in the streets, some conversations are dull, like buying a drink and some are colourful like a customer haggling with a market trader.

Londoners are not cold hearted I would pedal this belief as strongly as I could and in their defence I have a story to share.  For you see a Londoner may not be the one to speak first, but with the majority if you stop them and ask them a question or ask for help most will endeavour to help you out.  There are the cases however that are most warm and touching in a city portrayed as being so cold.  Two of these incidents I witnessed both in Gay Clubs in London.  One was in Astoria and one was in Scala.  The story of both is more or less the same.  A young man seemingly heartbroken or distraught disappears into a stairwell and with his emotions overwhelming him he drops his head into his hands and cries.  In Astoria, this happened in the middle of the Dance floor with hundreds of people around him a few came and sat on the dance floor with him and spoke to him.  I don't know what they said I couldn't hear for the music.  In Popstarz at Scala I did hear well, the two guys were most certainly strangers.  The second sat with him, I was with my friends at the time trying to call someone from the quiet of the stairwell, there was no answer but I was distracted by the events above so I didn't really care.

This world would be a far better place if we all shared this mentality.  In studying Psychology lately I have read of a few things, the most disturbing being the case of Kitty Genovese which if you have not read I will save the horror and highlight the simple fact it portrays - The "Bystander effect" is the action or lack of action a crowd of people will collectively exhibit as the response of expectation.  In Kitty's case this ended horribly as the crowd in this case being her neighbours didn't act.  Of 38 people who witnessed her murder and death not one called the police.  This wasn't out of callousness but rather out of the response that "someone else will" and in many ways that mentality leads to one simple truth - you are safer within a small number of people as opposed to a large crowd.  You will be more likely to be helped.

What all this has to do with me and you is simple: we are all susceptible to the Bystander Effect but you can chose to be exempt.  You can choose to be kind, you can choose to be the one that breaks the silence and above all else you can choose to be the one to help.

To echo the quote at the beginning of this post, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers and in this last week or so I have really needed people to talk to, and in that time 4 people I have not spoken to in years came back into my life, all through random paths.  I can't help but smile at this and be grateful to whatever higher power guided them to me.  I do not believe in coincidences.  Everything happens for a reason, as random as chaotic as those coincideces may be:

Perfect Order is Perfect Chaos and Perfect Chaos is Perfect Order