How are you doing this week? How is your perspective of the world, and the role you have within it?
Perhaps an odd question to start with this week.
We have had the enormous privilege of actually being able to go away on a foreign holiday in this past month. It was a dream holiday booked nearly three years ago, and cancelled twice because of pandemic disruption and horribleness.
It was all we could have hoped for and more, and I am very grateful.
Like many other weary travellers, we found ourselves in the boiling mass of humanity that is the security hall at Heathrow airport.
It was not much fun.
So many people, so much palpable stress and frustration, and many, many queues. Lots of confusion about what we needed to do and what we kept on our person and what stayed in our hand luggage.
Pull back from that image, and the perspective I have is of the complete and utter mess the world is in right now. Staff shortages, Brexit, economic crises, war, illness and Covid, poor planning and poor government decision making…..when you look at the big picture like this it feels overwhelming. I can easily slide into inertia, feeling overwhelmed with helplessness at the ability of me, just-one-person to effect any kind of meaningful change.
And yet, small things, simple things matter.
In the security queue behind us was a lone student, travelling back to the US. She was frazzled and anxious about how it all worked, and what was expected of us by the security staff (much confusion reigned in general). I was tired, and we were late and hassled about our connecting flight. I could easily have stood in the queue in an impatient grump, sighing audibly and irritatedly and huffing and hurrumphing to make myself feel better at the ineptitude of it all.
But what would that have achieved, other than making me feel worse?
So I started chatting to her in the queue, and we passed a very happy 10 minutes exchanging stories and talking about who was waiting for her back home. She relaxed, I reassured her as best I could in a mum-ish sort of way, and we parted with smiles.
Small things, simple things. It was a small conversation, but it reminded me of the importance of seeing beyond the frustration of the system to the people behind it and sharing simple kindnesses. Of course I am not condoning the chaos that is Heathrow airport, nor am I commenting on the decision making and issues that have precipitated it.
But I am aware that each of us is a human, and if we believe that we are simply trying to do our best in that moment, and are worthy of respect and kindness, it is a start.
A small start, but a start.
I trialled this approach to my own frustration a second time, this time chatting to a mum who was travelling on her own with two small children and who was being held up by security whilst already horribly late for her connecting flight.
Again, a small thing but simply to try and reassure her that she was seen, she was not alone, to connect in a small way with kindness and a touch of humanity in the midst of her off-the-chart stress. I chatted to her whilst she waited for the security man, and then waited for my own bag.
I thanked the security man – he is simply doing his job and the staff shortages and chaos are not his direct personal fault.
Simple things, small things – little kindnesses that remind our fellow humans that they are seen and they are of worth. I made no practical difference to their lives at all – I could no more resolve the queue crisis or delay needed flight connections than fly to the moon myself. But I can notice, and I can speak kind words.
Human connection that speaks kindly and breaks down barriers, however small, is a good start.