A long train ride to the bus station. There were a few empty seats right in front of where I stood, but they were the ones which are reserved for people with disabilities or with kids. I do not sit on those. It is not a matter of principle, and neither a hill I would die on, but my laziness. It takes an absurd form, where I am okay standing for a while, for the entire trip even; the act of sitting down and then having to get up when someone needs that seat is too tiring for me. It is emotionally tiring, maybe. The whole mental ordeal I go through deciding which one of the new arrivals at every stop needs this seat more than me. The easiest way to avoid that is to stay standing.
Quite a few stops before the end, two mothers get on. One with a boy, probably around 4 or 5 and one with a little baby. The one with the boy, probably a local Dutch lady, pushed a stroller onto the train and in the reserved area.
"There must be some braking mechanism?" She asked.
The other lady hurried over with the baby in her arms and adjusted the brake, and they both sat down in front of each other. Then began a long single channel exchange. The mothers talked to their children in their native languages and to each other in English. I know just enough Dutch and Chinese to recognise when these languages are being spoken, but not enough to make out anything. So I was just restricted to the English parts. They had apparently met at the train station, and got talking. They shared the bond of motherhood, which opened up uncountable conversation topics.
I think it's beautiful how excited we get when we find someone who not only listens, but understands. How, in our excitement, we want to talk about so many things that the sentences start overlapping. How we smile wide, or frown deep, how every emotion is as real as when we felt it first, when we experienced the thing we are talking about. How the moment seems to pass so quick, but still stays frozen in time; in the memory of each of us, as a genuine human connection. Very social animals, our kind.
But I did not really pay any attention to the exact details of the conversation, I was too distracted by the kids, as they had devised a new game on the spot. The boy would roll a ball over the stroller to the baby and the baby, in their attempt to grab the ball would inevitably push it back to the boy. I wanted to be a part of their game, it was entertaining. At least more entertaining than the monotonous, post-war Amsterdam suburb we were passing then. It wasn't ugly by any means, but very symmetric and well planned. There was more charm inside the train. The conversation was now only restricted to the two mothers, and it was very animated. The children were also getting more and more competitive about the ball. You could see the frustration building up on the baby's little face each time they failed to grab the ball, rising up to a crescendo.
That coach was not too quiet before either, but when the baby started crying it broke a trance. The boy looked confused. I guess he was still processing if his actions were the cause of the wailing. He was trying to hand over the ball but the baby was no longer interested in it. The "harm" had been done. The poor boy could not figure out if there was any way to help in that situation. The mother was trying hard to soothe the baby, while also giving me an apologetic smile. I knew that smile. I had seen it on my mother, when my younger brother used to cry. A smile which also showed the inevitability and helplessness of the situation. Maybe it is a universal thing, to care if strangers around you are getting disturbed by something as natural as a baby's cry. But then, what is for sure universal, is to get disturbed by a baby's cry. Our brains are made to want it to stop, to make sure everything is okay.
The baby did calm down, but stayed in their mother's arms. Everyone slipped back into the limbo which is a characteristic of trains, the inertia not letting your body realise how fast you are going but slight irregularities in the motion not letting you feel stationary either. My mind wandered. Cooperation, a complex system of empathy, these are kind of the building blocks of our society. Understanding emotions from expressions, being understood, bringing a stranger right into our circle of concern, all beautiful things. But did humans develop such complex systems as a result of trying to live in a settled society or did settled societies with such systems are the only ones which survived? Does their beauty only lie in their practicality? Even animals show empathy, but not as advanced, as intricate as we do. And usually their circle for which it is reserved is very small. But for humans it keeps on enlarging, as we keep interacting with more and more people. Every day we see, hear, meet people, we weave stories, and then we live them. We feel happy when we make a new friend. I love this facet of humanity, but do I only love it because I too, am human? Wired to love and appreciate these things?
Imagine an alien, observing humans interact. Further assume this alien does not have the concept of empathy in their society, however contradictory that sounds. Would they find us being happy by making friends, understanding emotions from a smile, all these things, Beautiful? Practical? Unnecessary?
For such an interdependent species as ours, can there be any notion of "too much empathy"?
The train had come to a stop. This was the stop where they had to get off. The lady with the baby still in her arms made her way towards the gate, the other lady offered to bring the stroller, and was trying to undo the brakes. Unsuccessfully. The brakes were makeshift, held in place with a tightly tied cloth. This was a moment of anxiety. The lady with the baby came back hurriedly and tried to undo the brake with one hand, unsuccessfully again.
I moved automatically. I try usually to be a helpful person, but this time the driving force was more than just a want to be of help. It was a selfish desire to be a tiny part in their story. To share the connection between those four even if for just a few seconds. I asked them if I should just pick up and carry the empty stroller out. Two panicked and confused nods, the signal for departure was going off. It was a close call, but as the gates closed right in my face, all four of them and the stroller were on the other side of it, safe on the platform. Both the mothers were looking at each other, panting, relief in their eyes. The train pulled away and I slowly went back to where I was standing, still some way to go for my own stop.
I was happy. I had refused to be an alien observer. It was an act of self acceptance, a belief that even beyond any sense of practicality, human connection is beautiful and real to me and I would not want it any other way.
An interesting article I read later
