One of the most touching incidents one can hope to experience in life is a random act of kindness. It is great to talk about, greater still to do such an act, but to experience it is in some ways indescribable. I thought that having experienced two of these myself (one just yesterday), it would be interesting to pen down my thoughts.

I.

Let us begin with the most recent one. I often go cycling every evening; it is not an ordeal: I do only a 20km lap in the interest of fitness, agility and, above all, mental clarity. Of late I have been accompanying my neighbour who recently happened to take me on a new route that slips through the countryside, passing briefly through a village or two.

At around six-thirty when we were passing through one such village, dark clouds began to loom above us and within a minute it was raining cats and dogs. We hurried to a shelter nearby hoping to park our bikes and remain dry, but nature had other plans. We ended up spending roughly ten minutes there before spotting a house about one-hundred metres away. Sure, it had been there all along, but the strong winds, two exploding transformers, and the pouring rain brought visibility down to a couple of feet.

We stole a moment to rush towards the house hoping its walls would provide us better shelter but no sooner than we had got there did we spot a middle-aged couple sitting at the doorstep. They owned the house, of course. The two of us hesitated for a moment when we saw them but what happened next took us by surprise: the couple got up, welcomed us in, and one of them disappeared into the house and came back with a chair. It was the only chair they owned. They placed it in the veranda and asked one of us to sit on the chair while the other sat on a granite slab attached to the wall and fashioned into a sort of bench. We were still hesitant (but of course) but the couple insisted. As soon as we graciously accepted the hospitality, they smiled and walked into their house.

We spent a good hour there watching the relentless monsoon showers sending people either scurrying back home or off to find shelter by the side of the road. As my friend and I talked to each other through the din, the couple spent time talking as well but inside their home—keeping their front door ajar all through. In the midst of all this I could not help but lose myself in thought. Why did they help us? Why did they treat us well? Why were they so kind? What did they have to gain? Why did they give up their own chair for us?

It could be just me, but it was sad to think that we live in a world where it is hard for us to accept someone’s kindness without being sceptical about it; or to believe that someone can do something for us without expecting something in return. It was a beautiful feeling unfortunately accompanied by wariness.

II.

The second incident is one I have talked about a couple of times in the past. Back in 2013 or so on one of my visits to Germany, my family and I decided to spend some time in a famous gothic church (which I will leave unnamed intentionally) looking at the architecture and learning about its history. We spent an incredible amount of time walking around the place and even more time admiring the paintings, ceiling, pillars, arches, tombs before finally standing before the altar.

We were quite a distance away since the region around the altar had been cordoned off: a €5 ticket per head would get us all closer to the intricate lamp and the beautiful stained glass mural behind it. We had simply paused before it, fully intending to buy a ticket to enter, when an elderly woman approached us from behind and, with a nurturing smile on her face, handed us a ticket and asked us to go on inside. She had likely seen us, thought we could not afford the tickets, and bought them for us.

For a moment we were lost, but soon we were overcome with gratitude. Here was a woman whose intention was incredibly pure: she genuinely wanted to help someone and that was it—there were no strings attached.

Both she and the village couple struck me as not people who did someone a good turn to feel better, but as people who did such a thing habitually, without thinking about it. They were genuinely good, kind-hearted people. These were the kind of people who could move you and not even bother to recognise it. We could do with morse people of this kind.