I'll Help

Three little words that can puncture the silence and bring people back to life. At the moment a lot of people are a bit dazed. A lot of clever people in high positions are very dazed. With all the ways to divert our attention nowadays while we’re out and about, playstations, telephones, books, papers, internet, ipods often we are not very connected even when we are standing right next to each other. At this moment of global crisis, some people are likely to be even more away with the fairies than usual, with thoughts of redundancy and bailiffs running through their minds. This collective absent mindedness sort of doesn’t matter most of the time, trouble is over time or cumulatively this lack of common attention can be dangerous, eg pickpockets’ lives are getting a lot easier in these distracted days, and also in an emergency most people will take a good few seconds to work out what’s going on specially if they’re plugged into beyoncé…

the other day on the tube a lady was standing there in the carriage with about 3 big suitcases, everyone around in the carriage was plugged in or tuned out and her stop was next, how do I know that – my training means I specialise in being there – in being observant – so I could see she was preparing to exit – tickets, checking pockets etc, now 3 big, heavy suitcases, small woman and me and two others between her and the door. Three little words broke the haze as we pulled into the station – I heard me say, "I’ll help", she looked at me delighted and better than that everyone around came to life and started pulling her cases for her and holding doors open and generally being really great, afterwards for a few seconds we all basked silently in a shared idea that we’d been useful and ‘good people’ and shared a real life connection, only a fragment of life, but then what else is there? and then we went back to the atomised existence we’d shared before, but the lesson I felt was so great was ‘I’ll help’ – the effect amazed me, not ‘would you like me to help?’, which is a question with a built in time delay, but a statement that galvanised people into action. Take charge, find 3 ways to say "I’ll help" each day and find out what a difference it’ll make to your life experience. x