Positively Newsworthy – The Little Things, Brought to you by By Niall Mac Giolla Rua.
From our Winter 2015/2016 issue.
Beautiful events and moments are happening all around us. Look around, smile, see kindness everywhere you go. If it’s not there, you have been gifted the wonderful opportunity to be the person to introduce it to that space and time, create it, watch the ripples…
On the Bus
About six weeks ago, I was on the bus and a woman with a reasonably mild intellectual disability was showing her card to the driver to board. It wasn’t valid but she didn’t understand. The bus driver was trying his best to explain it to her but she was looking more and more upset and the bus driver was looking more and more helpless.
He turned his head to give a pleading look towards a Dublin Bus official who happened to be standing by the back door. The official gave the man one of those “It’s okay” reassuring type nods and the bus driver said to the women “Go on, it’s okay you can go on”.
But by now the woman was completely baffled. She had started crying and didn’t move, she just stood there crying and looking down. The Dublin Bus official gently led the woman down to a spare seat and stayed next to her for the whole journey reassuring her, comforting her, giving her tissues, talking to her and giving her the most enormous, generous and sincere smiles, telling her over and over “It’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just a mistake.”
That’s just one scene in one day of people being out-of-their-way lovely and courageous and magnificent and really, really true. It happens every day, all the time and we don’t see enough of it in the news.
