It's Easy to Be Good
Kindness Costs Nothing
Dear Friend,
Chiara turned to me with tears in her eyes, “It’s easy to be good, why are people so surprised when you help them, it’s so simple?”
She had just been blessed by a retired lady at the check-in desk at Turin airport.
We’d arrived early for our flight home to London. There were a few other early birds in the line, a retired couple in front of us bumping up against the machinery of a particular ‘low cost’ airline.
The couple had had to catch an emergency flight from the south of Italy as the lady’s mother was in her last few days of a long term illness. She’d hoped to hold her mother one last time before she died, but that was not to be.
They’d either misunderstood or simply forgotten in their grief to check in online two hours before their flight home and so the lovely young women working for the airline was explaining to them that they had to pay one hundred and twenty Euros to check in.
This is where Chiara stepped in and learned their story. She thought the couple were on our flight, they still had two hours, but they were heading home, south.
The young woman from the airline was a little hurt because she was genuinely trying to help too. The system offered no flexibility or compassion. She also informed the couple that she could not accept cash. The man’s card was also the wrong type of card.
By this time Chiara was elbow deep in the whole situation and without pausing paid with her card and learned the couple’s story. The couple were taken aback that someone would help them so. The husband reached into his wallet and pulled out the money, not a hint of anger in his striking blue eyes, simply dumbfounded.
“You have the money but you can’t pay.”
The wife blessed Chiara several times during the exchange. An energy she felt around her like a breeze on her skin.
Later she remarked on how lovely it felt to be genuinely blessed by a person of faith. How much she’d liked the couple and the young woman from the airline. How she wished we would see them again, but that also was not to be.
We’ll always remember them though.
And the blessings.
How easy it is to bless one another.
To come together in acts of humanity.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey