People Are Nice

I always like to think the best of people. I know that sounds, to some ears, naive but that's the way I am. Some of us live in a society these days where people are afraid to stop and help someone stranded by the roadside, for example with a car breakdown, in case they get caught up in some gruesome scenario where they can later be accused of assault, or where they get assaulted themselves by the people who are supposedly 'needing help'. It's very sad, and goes against the values that should be the building blocks of any decent society. What is society, other than the recognition that our lives, our individual lives and the lives of those who are near and dear to us, are intertwined with, and interdependent on, other people in the wider community? To me it is self-evident. A community cannot function; a country, its people, its economy, cannot thrive and grow without the communal efforts of the ordinary citizens. Within this belief it is implicit that we must have an optimistic attitude to others. This is also important for our own individual happiness and well-being.

Now this is not to say that we should open our doors to all and sundry, and let every freeloader and sponger walk all over us. Of course there are bad people in the world who don't give a shit about society. Of course we are in danger from criminals and all kinds of ne'er-do-wells. But do the bad people outnumber the good? Do their numbers even constitute one percent of the total? Who the hell knows. I'm not going to talk statistically because I haven't the faintest notion of what the statistics are, I just know what I know. And that is that a lifetime's experience tells me that most of the people I meet in my journeyings, and most of the people I know, are decent people. And it's good to recognise this because I also meet the kind of person who is too eager to generalise, who without even a pause for thought would tell you that "They're all criminals in that place/town/country/wherever" or "They're totally ignorant those Bosnians/Americans/Australian Aborigines/Germans/white/blacks/old age pensioners/whoever". And I just hate those Jeremiahs who are just so negative you've got to get out of their company as quickly as possible before you start to feel like hanging yourself, or just smothering them with the nearest cushion. So when something nice happens that confirms my faith in the fundamental goodness of people then I should celebrate it and also tell others. And in that way I make a small contribution towards making sure that the Jeremiahs don't succeed in poisoning all of our lives.

I had picked my son up at Dubrovnik airport and it's a 220 km drive back up the coast. There was the most horrendous rainstorm, it was just monsoon-like. As we were going through Makarska, about three quarters of the way home, I drove too fast into fairly deep water. The electrics got flooded and the car conked out. I managed to re-start it but once we got clear of the town it finally gave up the ghost. What to do? I phoned a taxi driver I know and asked him to come and collect us, and he agreed but it would take him an hour to get down to us. Shortly after I had talked to him a car pulled up beside us and a young woman shouted over asking if we needed help. She had two other people in the car, also female, and she had no reservations it seemed about stopping with an offer of assistance. I thanked her and said that help was on its way.

After another five minutes a car going in the opposite direction stopped and two guys came over. They gave me to understand that they were mechanics and perhaps they could bring some expertise to bear. They did try and sort the problem on the spot but to no avail. They then phoned a friend who had a wrecker truck and he came and picked us up. Now he was going to take us to his garage and try to fix us out but I asked him, with a rustling motion of my thumb and forefinger, how much he might charge to take us all the way home. He offered to do this for seven hundred kuna. Fine, I said, let's go and in the meantime I phoned back to my taxi driver and asked him to return to base, I'd settle his bill later. And so the tale ends happily with my son and me arriving in time for a formal dinner at the town's best hotel.

This is not the first time I have experienced such willingness to help from strangers in Croatia. Again it was a car thing. My friend's engine was over-heating. A car mechanic came over to us, saw the problem, took us to his place, spent almost an hour searching for and fitting a thermostat valve, and got us back on the road. And he charged us nothing. Now isn't that how society should operate. People are nice, they really are.