Catherine Drea: The kindness of strangers

These days I think a lot about how we all have the same basic needs; to be safe, to be fed, to have a roof over our heads. 

I was never more aware than today, that those of us who have these basic needs met are amongst the luckiest and most privileged people on the planet.

If any one of these basic needs is disrupted a living nightmare will ensue. 

We see it on our screens day in and day out, the relentless misery of homelessness, war and starvation.

That’s where the next basic need that we all share comes in; the need to be connected to each other. 

It’s not as simple as it sounds and we are doubly lucky if we have friendship, community, love and family around us.

We are all connected through these fundamentals of living. 

I like to think that we are good at this in Ireland. That in spite of all the challenges we have held onto some of the old values that were passed down to us. 

But then I find myself in a room full of people, eyes down on their little devices and I despair that we might not be as connected as I thought after all.

Being Irish in itself is hugely life enhancing for us. We are a tiny country and so you don’t have to go back too far to find that we are probably all cousins and, if not cousins, then at least neighbours. 

It’s never surprising to us that we can usually connect someone we have just met to someone that we already know. Even when I was minding my own business in a lift in Taiwan, I once met a man who had not only known my father but who had also taught my husband in school! When you are Irish it is always a small, small world.

We pride ourselves on our openness and our hospitality. Irish people get on well with anyone and everyone and are relaxed and informal, don’t we? In the global rankings we are usually at least in the top 20 for one of the friendliest and safest countries.

But friendliness and making connections easily is not confined to being Irish. This is probably something that we forget. People are the same all over the world. Unless they are ground down with fear and oppression human beings are naturally kind and hospitable to strangers.

Wherever you are in the world, you will come across people who have no connection with you whatsoever but just respond in a way that is beyond nationality. People who barely know where Ireland is and who care less, can be incredibly kind too. Countries in South America and Asia and in far flung Africa could teach us plenty about community and caring.

In the days when travelling by hitch hiking was a thing, myself and Himself often wandered with no particular destination. I would not on my life recommend this form of travel to anyone these days! 

Times were very different then and I suppose we were both naive and very lucky.

One of our great journeys was when we were picked up by a group of Iranians who were driving a fleet of Mercedes cars back to Tehran. They had come across Europe to buy the cars in Amsterdam and bring them back for their wealthy compatriots. We met them around Strasbourg in France and they drove us across the Alps, through Yugoslavia, Greece, the island of Chios and into Istanbul. This route included nights in hotels, meals, ferries and endless ice-creams.

Our new Iranian friends talked to us about their lives, dreams, family and we told them about ours. They very much wanted us to go all the way to their home but Istanbul literally took the eye out of my head and instead we said our goodbyes. 

We were totally unaware then of the massive unrest and revolution simmering there. Probably a good decision.

Added to the generosity of the Iranians, the Turkish families we met on our further travels south continued to offer us hospitality and friendship to the point that we were almost adopted and found it hard to leave. And that as they say is another story!

These days I think about my Iranian friends and all the other hospitable people I met in those days. 

I wonder how anyone can assume that ordinary people anywhere, just like us, living their lives, have anything to account for when it comes to their regimes or their leaders' appetite for conflict. 

The powerlessness that so many of us feel at the moment is simply relentless and we should never forget that we are living in a peaceful quiet backwater, which was also a war zone many times in our history.

My own parents lived through WWII. Their parents survived WWI. 

My family tree is littered with the impact of those and other previous conflicts. Our generation thought we would live in a time of love and peace. That the world would be one. We shared that dream.

Our tiny little island is now largely a haven of peace, beauty and tranquility. Our support for people seeking shelter and a better life is a drop in the ocean in global terms as to what is needed. There is a cost, yes, but kindness, respect and friendship costs nothing.

Let’s be proud of that.