:: Life in the Lost Lane ::

Life in the Lost Lane
A collective of English Gentlemen

Tuesday, April 13

When deeds don't feel good
Today, as I walked into my train station I saw a woman. She was on her own. As I saw her she arrived at the foot of a stairway. The stairway leads up to bridge that crosses the rail way lines. Aside from a small, one story brick building which houses the ticket office there is little else that defines this as a station. It is a place like many others across the UK.

She made her way slowly and carefully up the stairs. She was not, as far as I could see ill, old or less able than hundreds of other people I would see later in and around central London. She took her gradual and difficult time because she had a pushchair.

By the time I began to cross the bridge, walking toward her she had just reached the top and was walking toward me. I asked her if she would like a hand on the way down on the other side. She looked a little shocked but thankfully agreed.

It took me no time at all. I held the front wheels of the pushchair and walked back down the stairs I had just ascended. All the while the little girl in the chair, dressed in bright colours watched me and smiled. I helped the woman up a further set of stairs; rather than leave her to walk up a long ramp to the street level.

As I walked up the stairs for the second time that morning I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness. I felt an unbearable sense of remorse, which I still seem unable to rationalise.

It may be because my family is about to grow – my sister is soon to become a mother, or maybe something more. It may be that my problem was the knowledge the woman’s plight was not aided by any of the four commuters who had already watched her mount the bridge unaided. They had nothing to do but wait.

It may be that my own natural concern for my loved ones. How they will handle the burden of responsibility and occasional inconvenience that is one aspect of parenting which made me feel uneasy.

It appears to me that it is too close for me to understand still. I will no doubt resolve this or forget about it in time. In my own world, where answers come and go in shifting and atheistic fragments, I have no simple answers, explanations or dogmas that explain these happenings and feelings immediately.

Perhaps this is a calling to some higher cause. It may be that I will soon reach some enlightened place from where I could understand or help. I doubt this. My doubt keeps my version of faith and beliefs both personal and a ‘work in progress’. Doubt, that keeps me from religions and other systems that are sold as answers to those in need.

In a place not unlike anywhere else, when people could do with a hand or some time: what is there to do, if we have nothing to do but wait?

posted by E! @ 9:00 PM

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