Nice Things Happen Too.

[Kopite Girl 0]

So. We've got the rant thread for venting our anger.

I thought we could have a nice thread to share nice things.

I've just got home after todays radiotherapy session. Now it really takes it out of you. I had to go alone as mum had something else to do.

So. I comes out. Standing at traffic lights I came over really sick. This elderly lady asks me if I'm Ok. Bless her heart, she linked me and said 'come on love, I'll help you across. We'll pretend you're helping me' - well that kindness made me burst into tears. She grabbed me into the coffee shop and bought me a coffee. I waited with her for her bus before getting mine.

I'm an Athiest but I'm sure she was my guardian angel. Bless her soul. I hope I can repay her kindness one day.

Anything nice happened to you guys?

[Argento Reloaded 1]

That´s humanity! When you have pets and sons you find yourself laughing or crying for little things everyday!

[Autumnpuma 0]

I just noticed your Hank Williams sig, Steph. That brightened my day. Thanks!

[AleHop 0]

Very nice Steph.

You're brave.

God bless you.

[Kopite Girl 0]

I just noticed your Hank Williams sig, Steph. That brightened my day. Thanks!

- LOVE that song. Listen to a lot of the 'old time' country music. Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Boxcar Willie, Willie Nelson, etc. Jambalaya is one of my favourite songs, ever.

Glad your smiling, Mike!

[HandyNZL 1]

Isn't Boxcar Willie part of the Thomas the Tank Engine crew?

[Kopite Girl 0]

Isn't Boxcar Willie part of the Thomas the Tank Engine crew?

Yeah! The most interesting part! CHOO CHOO!

[maure 1]

Sorry to hear you had a bad day, Steph, but glad to hear you came across a kind stranger.

To be honest, things like that happen in Japan all the time to foreigners. It's a Japanese thing that has nothing to do with foreigners but takes on a special twist with foreigners. It's call "tatemae", literally, "what stands in front" and as opposed to your private thoughts. Some people say that, in Japan, hypocrisy is a virtue but it isn't like that. Tatemae can be used as hypocrisy but it simply means that regardless of your feelings, you try to put your best out there.

So, many times I get things for free in restaurants and shops. Small gifts out of the blue. Also, I have forgotten how many times old folks give me fruit from their gardens simply because I happen to go by. And, in more than one ocassion, a car has stopped to give me an umbrella while I was walking in the rain. The list of this kind of nice gestures is endless, really.

Japan is cool.

EDIT: typo

[Kopite Girl 0]

I'd love that.

Not enough people in todays world think of doing that. My Dad used to say in his youth, you could leave your front door open, be friends with your neighbours, run errands for others, leave your children playing in the street. Today that world has disintegrated. I think the line Robert De Niro speaks as Al Capone in 'The Untouchables' is reminiscent of todays society. 'You can get further in crossing the street with a kind word and a gun, rather than just a kind word.'

Still, the times something nice does happen feels more special than ever and you don't take it for granted.

[maure 1]

Ask your dad about laws and regulations. You will be surprised how much the government intrudes in our lifes nowadays. What's worse is that we are the ones voting these kind of politicians to office and, consequently, these kinds of regulations. It's insane to think that there are countries where it is illegal to smoke or drink water while driving.

Of course, and regardless of how crazy the world is or gets, kind folk abound. Consider the brutality of American society a hundred years ago (I speak as an American here) and think of this annecdote written by someone whose name I cannot remember. This fellow was on a train crossing the continent while he happened to share his cabin with five small unattended children, the eldest of which was no older than 7 yo. They all had a sign hanging from their necks explaining that they came from Germany and were going to a relative in the midwest. The fellow describes how unimaginable it was the fact that, indeed, there was always a kind hand helping the kids to take the next step... which at some point involved cross the Atlantic ocean! The fellow was awestruck because, at the time, slavery was still in body if not in shape as was the genocide of indians, in full sign, the government paying for the scalps of any indian, children, women, elderly... and yet this small miracle of the five children was taking place.

It is a strange world, where the completely deranged and the enlighten live together in what can only be disharmony.

Threre is a poem by Rabindranath Tagore that I'll butcher here: How sad would the forest be if only the birds with the best voices sang.

EDIT: typos

[Insider 0]

- LOVE that song. Listen to a lot of the 'old time' country music. Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Boxcar Willie, Willie Nelson, etc. Jambalaya is one of my favourite songs, ever.

Glad your smiling, Mike!

I do Hank Jnr's 'Blues Man' on my unplugged dates. I'll dedicate the next rendering to you. Get well.

[Kopite Girl 0]

I do Hank Jnr's 'Blues Man' on my unplugged dates. I'll dedicate the next rendering to you. Get well.

Sean, that is so very lovely. I'm honoured and blessed to have great people in my life who make it all worthwhile. Thank you so much.

Maure. I wish I could. Dad died in February. I'll still ask him in my own way though!

[Persevere 0]

This is related to the topic of the thread in spirit although I may be stretching it a bit so bear with me.

I'm reading a collection of letters and essays by American writer Raymond Chandler, a sometimes brilliant, somewhat cynical man not given to easy compliments nor prone to suffering fools gladly. He is communicating with his British publisher about a possible trip overseas. Obviously he has deep admiration for the steely determination exhibited by the English only a few years earlier. This letter is from January 1949:

“…I have in mind an unforgettable little story of some friends who visited Luxembourg a couple of years ago. They stayed at a very nice hotel where the food and wine were magnificent. The atmosphere was cheerful, people from all the countries of Europe, almost, were there, having their ease. At two tables were English people, only two. At one sat an elderly couple, formerly well-to-do, now not so well-to-do. At the other a demobbed tank officer with his mother. On all the tables of the hotel dining room but these were bottles of wine. Those who had never surrendered drank water in order that those who had surrendered might drink wine. I think this story is wonderful.”