Layers of goodness!

Every time I look at a rose flower in our garden, what overwhelms me is its rich colour, fragrant presence and the symbolic message! It gives a glimpse of the layers of goodness it brings to a beholder!

Each human being is endowed with such layers of goodness, although most of us do not see beyond the superficial or the obvious in people around us. We have a preoccupation of bias or suspicion of others being selfish or self absorbed. 

A senior citizen walks about a kilometre with his elbow crutches to take breakfast to a man in his neighbourhood who is bed bound due to a stroke recently. This senior citizen had heard about him about a month back and since then he does visit him every day morning. The bed bound person with paralysis on his right side has reduced language skills. From being bed bound during the last one month since this senior citizen started visiting him with breakfast, he has made progress and sits on a stool at the entrance door waiting for this senior citizen in the morning. On one morning when the senior citizen reached the house, this person was preparing black coffee to serve him on his arrival. In a month's time, the man was able to recover and is back at a shop as a helper. 

When I heard this story, I was moved to appreciate something of this reality of layers of goodness in each human being.  A senior citizen walks with a pair of elbow crutches half a kilometre each day carrying a breakfast packet; a hemiparetic person gets up to make coffee for his visitor!

I wish we would see the deep layers of goodness in the lives of others!

How do we look into the lives of others!

The other day I was climbing the steps with four bags in my hands. Two middle aged people stopped and took from my hands two bags. They were brothers who had come to the hospital to visit their father who was on a ventilator following an advanced COVID infection. They thought that their father was sinking! Amidst this cloud of sorrow and sense of loss, they stopped and lightened my burden till the main gate of the hospital. It this from such experiences, I get a sense of the layers of goodness that I come across in day to day life at work and in my neighbourhood. A colleague came to greet me at the car park when I returned to work after a break! I left my lap top at the security checking station in the air port when I travelled last time. Just as I was about to board the flight, a security official came and handed over me the lap top. The pictures in the closed circuit camera led them to find me! It was when it was handed over to me, I realised that I had left it behind! I had my camera bag and that absorbed all my attention. 

The election campaign is now in its last phase in five states in India. The language of hate and anger which is spoken by many leaders starting from the prime minister downwards make us hide our face in shame!  

All of us are people endowed with goodness. We are destined to be Good Samaritans. 

I wish we would normally hear a language of kindness and brotherhood spoken towards each other!

Let our relationships with each other help us to unfold the layers of goodness in each other! 

M.C.Mathew(text and Photo)