The best quality in a human being is Helpfulness.
There is a corner in my heart filled with nametags, uniforms, hairstyles, voices, eye colors, and smiles of strangers who have helped me as if their life depended on it. They don’t know me and if they once did, they surely forgot me now. But I know them very well. They are in my life everyday, and they grow with me too. I think of them when I am in a rut, summoning the oddity of a miraculous benevolence engrained in a rare heart to bless me that day.
Thank you, Katherin from KLM, who fought the crew to get my forgotten phone from a flight’s seat pocket after they told me I won’t get it until weeks later, when the complaint is dealt with through the management department. I remember how you kept ruffling your blonde short hair with a frustrated smile as you persisted to erase my problems for the day. A vein popped in your eye for my sake, and the crewmembers of KL445 hate your guts. But I love you. I think your family is so lucky to have you. Each time I want to give up on something lost, I ruffle my hair and think of your perseverance and surely, I am proud of the vein that pops in my eye. I look at it in the mirror and I say: “Thanks for this oomph you gave me Katherin! I made them do it, I bent an unnecessary “regulation”!”
Thank you, Hussain, from the traffic police, you skipped your wife’s delicious stewy ‘saloona’ lunch and stayed back to finish a traffic report that would have also taken weeks to deal with if it would not have been finished on the spot. I am Bahraini too; I know how we take our home-cooked lunches seriously. I hope you told your wife of the couple whose year you made. You kept some employees back with you to help us and although they were impatient and aggravated, you shifted your light to their faces when you said, “It is necessary to simplify other people’s lives. It should be the only priority for humanity. Things are getting too complicated, we only have each other here in this world- what are we doing if we are not helping each other?” I don’t know, Hussain. What ARE we doing if we are not helping each other? Nothing really, besides digesting and sleeping. I wish you a lifetime of delicious ‘saloonas’, I have a feeling lamb is your favorite.
Thank you Professor Cottier for curbing my grade in a failed exam that brought my GPA down and threatened my future. When you agreed that you would give me an oral exam to retake, you looked above my head with a stern, ready-to-bash expression on your face and asked me to apply the formulas you taught me in your class to life. I broke down and responded: “I don’t know! I don’t know! I would think that it would be:
X = LIFE’S KNOWN + LIFE’S UNKNOWN LIVING BEINGS IN THE PLANETARY SYSTEM.
(I read that once and thought, huh, true! Don’t ask me how it came to my mind then). Really, I have no idea how to apply your course to life. I will never understand the application of economics formulas to life and I don’t quite want to. I deserve an ‘F’, so just go ahead and give it to me.” You clapped one hand on top of the other as if you’re closing a sandwich and said: “You deserve an A for that answer, but all I can do is curb your grade. Just make sure you do not do this for a living”. And you did curb my grade. I am where I am because of your kind heart that refused to quantify my brain’s capacity in a systemic, objective, and robotic way. You have a reputation of being one of the best yet most unforgiving Professors out there. That is why your class was so full and you never got to know any of us personally. You should show them what you’re made of. To me, you’re an Alchemist of destinies.
Thank you to the strange woman, who looked like she was an “Anna”, in Aeroporto di Milano. You noticed me steadying my breath and washing my face with cold water in the bathroom by the Sbarro pizza place. (An anxiety attack. I was a mess as a college student; I thought I was the only going through a catharsis). You had shoulder-length frizzy dry hair that you did not bother combing, but your entirely gray outfit was so soothing and elegant in its uniform calmness and I thought to myself, really, who needs to comb their hair with such an impressive outfit? You asked me if I was okay. I told you that I am fine and only felt some acidity in my stomach. You sounded so weird to me when you then responded, “So what’s worrying you? The stomach is not the stomach. The stomach is your thoughts! Deal with what’s worrying you; for God’s sake learn to help yourself. You look terrible.” And you walked away with a tut. Everything is holistic, of course! I know this! Where has this knowledge gone to, Anna? I only needed to hear it again from a stranger like you. And after meeting you, it never escaped my mind ever again. That, and your gray earthy neutral outfit which I now always try to imitate when I travel to Milano.
Depending on when those strangers help us, most of us don’t remember their faces precisely or if they do, the features fade in time. There are many more strangers aside from Katherin, Hussain, Cottier and “Anna”, so many more others! As I am sure there are for you! What stays with us are how they made us feel. I don’t know about you, but I try so hard to remember their descriptive features as much as I can. I remember slanted eyes, one slightly lower than the other from exhaustion but also calm contentment. I remember a quivering eyelid waiting for a response on my behalf on the other end of the phone line. I remember a cottonmouth interrupting a self-entitled officer, thirsty and hungry but wanting to do more good than others for the day. I remember that the outer edge of the small-lettered “r” on a nametag had a blotch of ink that should have been re-printed because it looked unclean for such a pure employee. So that corner in my heart, where all the people who have helped me are boxed, actually looks like a bunch of random things, separated and amputated, but all joined or stacked up by the best quality in humanity: helpfulness. It is the comfiest most magnetic corner of my heart. I shut my sunshine off today just to reside in theirs, in there with them in the boxed corner of my heart labeled: HELPFULNESS.
Beisan A. Alshafei
January 31st, 2019
Beisan's Burble 