A Good Deed
When my husband told me what he had experienced on his way home from work the other day, it touched me so profoundly that I needed to share it.
My husband was driving down a six-lane highway, with three lanes going in his direction, all covered with heavy rush-hour traffic. He already noticed from a ways back a disabled man, having difficulty crossing the road. The man whose arms were all bent and crooked and whose twisted legs wobbled had almost fallen into traffic as he tried to get down from the curb and failed. Having missed a couple of pedestrian lights, sadly none of the dozens and dozens of cars that passed him had stopped to help.
Approaching the walk, my husband put on his four-way blinkers and stopped his car. He got out of the vehicle, walked up to the man, and asked if he needed help. The man gave an appreciative, “Yes!” My husband then escorted him across by stopping the other two lanes of traffic as well. With the man’s difficulty of movement, it took some time before they reached the other side of the highway.
The interesting thing was that once my husband had stopped all the lanes of traffic, every car waited until he returned to his own vehicle before any of them drove off again.
Tears came to my eyes when my husband told me what had happened that day. First, I had tears of sympathy for the man. How frustrating and helpless he must have felt. What we take for granted as simply crossing a street, for him it becomes a nightmare.
Then I replaced those sympathetic tears with ones of joy not only because of the depth of kindness my husband had displayed in helping another human being but the respect the other drivers had shown him for doing so.
It made me realize that despite the appearance of nonchalant, busy, and antisocial lives people portray, they still process the desire to support others. It only takes one to show the way but others soon follow.
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” By Howard Zinn