Good from bad...

Over the past 7 days I’ve experienced a number of things that haven’t gone as planned. One was a long train journey that was severely disrupted and altered. Another was an appointment that was cancelled without notice after making a journey to attend it and the third involved turning up at a restaurant to learn that they had issues with their kitchen and had to close.

What came through from all of these were two main themes:

The first was that panicking serves no healthy purpose. What’s happened has happened and it’s about what can be done to either remedy the situation or find an alternative.

The second is the generosity of [certain] people.

With the massive rail disruption there is little redemption for the train network itself who did nothing to help, but given the stress of the situation and impact on so many hundreds of people it could have caused tempers to flare but the reality was that for many hours of huge discomfort everyone remained courteous, polite and supportive to one another. It really wouldn’t have taken much to change this and was heart warming to witness.

The appointment being cancelled was for someone I was attending with and caused them huge stress. Once again there was little help from those ‘in charge’ for whom it was within their power to manage and instead it was one extremely kind person who generously gave of their time and helped above and beyond what was either required or expected and single handed changed the situation.

The restaurant was unable to operate and yet although the manager wasn’t able to offer a meal they did provide a free dessert to take away and left me in no doubt that I would return, albeit probably calling first next time to double check they are open!

It reminds me of the saying ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ and sometimes this can be seen or noticed very quickly and is obvious and other times requires a powerful microscope to try and detect anything silver or that resembles a lining if at all.

Over the coming weeks and months I’m sure there will be many more experiences that go awry and keeping in mind the two themes from above this will be helpful. Appreciating that by and large everything works out, one way or another and there truly are generous and kind hearted people who are willing to be ‘kinder than necessary.

Perhaps you can recall an event where someone was kinder than necessary towards you recently or the other way round and you were able to assist?