The Kindness of Strangers
I used to live on the streets of Madrid. My situation shouldn't cause concern because I always had the keys to an apartment. My responsibilities required that my companion and I spend the day, essentially from ten in the morning to 10 at night, out and about and meeting with people. Walking to and from our various appointments, hopping on buses, hailing taxis and punching metro passes resulted in an intimate knowledge of the city. To this day, I know Madrid better than any other city on the planet, with or without a map.
When you live on the street in a densely populated city you overhear conversations and encounter a multitude of languages. You also come across lost people. You might think that the people who get lost are foreigners and travelers. You'd be wrong. It turns out that most madrileños do not carry maps. They figure they'll know where they're going once they get off the metro. When they emerge to the street every sense of direction flees. They start walking east when they should have gone west and bam, they are clueless and they start asking directions.
Standing in an uncustomary neighborhood they realize they know no one. They find themselves dependent on the kindness of strangers. I cannot tell you how willing these strangers seem, ready to help out the frustrated and disoriented. The question gets asked about how to get to a certain address, the person listens and then describes the path. They point down the road and tell them that it's not the first or the second street but when they reach the third they will turn right, then two more streets and turn left. Keep going straight and the destination is on the left.
These strangers tend to be very specific in their directions. When the person asks a follow up question they repeat the very directions that they gave before adding details about colors of buildings and names of streets. You really want to be impressed by the knowledge these people exhibit of their city and their kind disposition to stop and spend some time with an unknown fellow human being and lend a hand with a simple act of kindness.
I cannot question their motives because these people really seem to want to help. But I do not underestimate that on hundreds, and possibly more than a thousand times, I had to redirect someone because I overheard completely wrong directions . I remember walking down the Gran Via, a principal street in Madrid and hearing someone explain the way to calle Pez, or Fish Street. The direction givers were sending these people in the opposite direction. Calle Pez is not a lengthy street and unless you know the area you may not even know of it's existence. Fortunately, I was able to stop them from getting more deeply lost and guide them to their intended destination.
I wonder whether GPS has eliminated the beauty that we find in the kindness of strangers.
When you live on the street in a densely populated city you overhear conversations and encounter a multitude of languages. You also come across lost people. You might think that the people who get lost are foreigners and travelers. You'd be wrong. It turns out that most madrileños do not carry maps. They figure they'll know where they're going once they get off the metro. When they emerge to the street every sense of direction flees. They start walking east when they should have gone west and bam, they are clueless and they start asking directions.
Standing in an uncustomary neighborhood they realize they know no one. They find themselves dependent on the kindness of strangers. I cannot tell you how willing these strangers seem, ready to help out the frustrated and disoriented. The question gets asked about how to get to a certain address, the person listens and then describes the path. They point down the road and tell them that it's not the first or the second street but when they reach the third they will turn right, then two more streets and turn left. Keep going straight and the destination is on the left.
These strangers tend to be very specific in their directions. When the person asks a follow up question they repeat the very directions that they gave before adding details about colors of buildings and names of streets. You really want to be impressed by the knowledge these people exhibit of their city and their kind disposition to stop and spend some time with an unknown fellow human being and lend a hand with a simple act of kindness.
I cannot question their motives because these people really seem to want to help. But I do not underestimate that on hundreds, and possibly more than a thousand times, I had to redirect someone because I overheard completely wrong directions . I remember walking down the Gran Via, a principal street in Madrid and hearing someone explain the way to calle Pez, or Fish Street. The direction givers were sending these people in the opposite direction. Calle Pez is not a lengthy street and unless you know the area you may not even know of it's existence. Fortunately, I was able to stop them from getting more deeply lost and guide them to their intended destination.
I wonder whether GPS has eliminated the beauty that we find in the kindness of strangers.
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