Life Lessons for me, I think...
I had just sat down on the bus when I noticed that there was some sort of commotion going on at the front left hand side bench seat - there was an adolescent girl with her arm around a 30-40 year old woman who was rocking back and forth and turning beet red, her tongue moving in and out of her mouth desperately as if she were panting, silent, and struggling to speak. The girl was talking in a foreign language to this woman, and blowing gently on her face, to cool her off. Suddenly, the woman made gestures that she needed to get up - in fact it looked like she was going to be sick - while this was happenning, a somewhat elderly woman was yelling to the girl to give the lady water, that she needed to have water, and then when the woman started looking sick - a lady across the aisle pulled the cord so that the girl and woman could get off - Turns out, this adolescent girl, to whom English must have been a second language, had a couple of other very young childeren under her care also - and they all got up and off - the look on the girl's face was heart wrenching as she struggled to lead the woman up Portage Ave, just pure fear and anguish... Dammit, I was so paralysed by not knowing what to do - I wanted to act - but I started worrying that I had to be at work very soon, if it was even my place to offer help -> would it seem strange to these people that some guy just followed them off of a bus and started offerring them charity? Ya know, I didn't want to insult them - the girl seemed to be very proud... But still, I just wanted to grab a bottle of water from a store, and run it over to them, offer the use of my cell, or pay to get them a taxi cab home - whatever it took - but I didn't. I just stayed on that bus, fixed within my seat, worrying about what to do, and if it was to late to go back and help them, until it was too late and there was no way that I could help them, and get to work on time, I had ridden too far... I almost cried I was so upset by my failure. But, I realised that I needed to change my perspective on this incident, or it was going to torture me more than was fair, and I realised that this was one of the first times that I felt so stongly the urge to help out a total stranger - to ignore social pretexts and just do what I felt was Right. Well, I knew looking back, that the next time I had any similar feelings, I would act more quickly and confidantly. I spent the rest of the day, trying not to shy away from those opportunities; giving some bus tickets to a drunken man who I met while sheltering from the downpour in a bus shack on Osborne -> he needed to get home to Sargent and had no fare..., to pledging to come in on my day off to help make sandwhiches for donation to a charity which feeds street kids, to even just offerring the taxi cab driver some gum after I had failed to start any conversation, and all we had shared until then was silence interrupted by his dry, throaty, cough -> he took me up on my offer and even thanked me again for the gum when he dropped me off - turns out he'd been struggling with this cough for days...
So what I'm trying to say guys, is, do any of you go through life worrying like this? Looking for ways in which to help others, being tortured when you see how you could have acted, and did not? I'm not trying to preach, I'm just curious. Personally I think it's partly just the helper in me...