It's two days after Thanksgiving and today we put up our Christmas tree. This is always a time of memories, as most of our ornaments have some connection to our past and our travels.
This year, I was reminded of our years in Spain, especially those first days when we didn't know anything, didn't have anything, didn't speak the language, and were having a terrible time getting anything done.
To wit: In our first week in Spain, we were at the local hypermarket (imagine a supermarket and an entire department store combined in one building), trying to buy some of the necessities for our new house, including a bed and mattress. We had two young children (3 and 5) and spent what felt like an hour looking at beds and wondering how the process worked. No one was coming to ask if we needed help, and we had no idea how to communicate that we wanted to buy one (would you carry a mattress up to the cash register?)
So we went to the cash register and asked (in horribly broken Spanish, we now realize) how to purchase a bed and mattress, knowing only the word for bed, and not mattress. The poor cashier who had to deal with us had no idea what we wanted, as she spoke no Engish, and we were not even functionally illiterate in Spanish.
Enter the stranger. A Spaniard, who overheard our troubles, and stepped in to help. He didn't work there, he was just another customer, there with his wife to shop for something, who saw people in distress and didn't walk away. He offered himself to act as translator, not only of the language, but of the process. His English wasn't perfect, but it was but it was a godsend, and through trial and error, he was able to tell us that we ordered now, and EVERYTHING was delivered. He stayed and worked through the whole process with us and the cashier, and didn't leave until he was sure everything was taken care of.
Just as in the story of the Good Samaritan, this man could have kept going, ignored our plight, and forgotten about us in no time. But rather than do that, he sacrificed his time and energy to help complete strangers, who hadn't even respected his country enough to learn how to communicate. It was an honorable and noble thing to do, and I've not forgotten it.
These people are everywhere. They don't get the attention that the "Karens" of our culture do; they're not the troublemakers, they're the trouble-stoppers. The people who, through small gestures, make a difference in the lives of the people they meet. It could be holding the door open for someone, helping carry a big package to someone's car, stopping by a car on the side of the road to see if someone needs help, or even just smiling and asking a sincere "How are you?", especially in these times of communal discomfort.
They're hard to see - so few of us call out attention to these people, their small acts of kindness get lost in the noise of our environments, sometimes not even recognized by the people they benefit. Such people aren't after recognition, though; they do these small things just because they're the right thing to do. That's where nobility is truly seen.
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