The people in the bus

This morning, while checking Instagram on my way to the train station, I saw a video from a Josh Thomas standup show where he talks about how we keep comparing ourselves to the coolest people and the prettiest people, making them the standard. “Have you guys ever been on a bus?” he asks the audience, and they laugh. “That’s the standard. That’s who we are trying to beat. It’s not that hard,” he jokes.

Now, the joke itself is a bit… well, I love Josh Thomas but what are we saying here? That people who take the bus aren’t cool or pretty or better than us?

But that’s a whole other discussion. I saw this post in the morning and I thought about it for a moment but then I had to pay my tuk driver and buy my train ticket and walk to the correct platform and take a train to work.

Work kept me busy and I lost track of time and almost missed my evening train. It was pulling into the station just as I was heading into the station and while I was buying my ticket, the railway officer asked if I was planning on taking this train (the next one was a slow train) and I said I doubted I could but he said I could if I hurried and well, I did manage to get into a carriage just before the train left the station.

Now this particular train gets a bit crowded, though I suppose, don’t they all? There was quite a bit of buzz near me and two men asked a seated passenger if he would be willing to give up his seat. They then gently led another man to the vacant seat. The man had a bit of blood on his forehead.

Other passengers asked what happened and this is what I understood: A bus had stopped near a zebra crossing and this man and another had started crossing the road. A bike didn’t see them and hit (or almost hit) the other man, who either fell onto this man or whose fall made this man lose his balance. Anyway, the man was injured and couldn’t quite make sense of what happened.

Two men getting off the bus had offered to take him to a hospital in Colombo but he had said he would feel better when he got home. And so, all three had boarded the train, except the man was now feeling numb and had a splitting headache.

Once he was seated, he couldn’t stay awake and one of the men accompanying him held his head back. The passengers discussed what was best: take him to the Panadura hospital (the train’s first stop after Wellawatte) or take him to a hospital closer to Galle. They discussed if he should be given a painkiller and, when another passenger fished out a bottle of Eau de Cologne from her bag, gently applied some on his head so it wouldn’t get into any of his wounds or his eyes.

Now, I can be a sceptic and say this is all a scam. That’s the kind of world we live in. But being a witness to all these events, I thought about that joke Josh Thomas had made. And I looked at the standard these people were setting. Being kind to a stranger. Being gentle. Making sure they are safe. Helping someone. Putting your needs and plans aside because someone needs you.

If this is the standard, then I’m fucked. Most of us are, because we wouldn’t really do any of this. As much as I was touched by the outpouring of kindness, at the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how this could be a scam. I thought about how I wouldn’t really offer help like this. I would still want to get home on time and not have to take someone to a hospital.

The people who take the bus, the people who take the train, they aren’t perfect or cool. Some of them are perverts, some are disgusting, some are selfish, some are annoying, and some are inconsiderate. But some of them are kind and helpful. They watch out for you even when they don’t need to. They make you realise how inadequate you are. And they make you realise how much better you can be.

So, who/what is the standard? Does it really matter? And what’s more important: being better than someone else or being the best we can be?