Kindness Versus Unkindness
By Ahn Byeong-wan
My wife's aunt has been living in her empty-nest home with her husband who retired from his teaching position at a secondary school a couple of years ago.
One day a foreigner, who looked like a migrant worker, came and rang their door bell and begged for some money. They felt so much pity for him that they let him in and gave him a meal before sending him back with a bit of money.
When asked if they did not feel it was dangerous to do so, they answered that they only realized it might have been so after he left. Their sympathy for him may have overwhelmed all other considerations, I thought.
When I was recently on my way to visit my aunt, I found myself lost. With new roads and new large buildings having been constructed all around since my last visit there decades ago, it was not easy to find the right direction.
I asked a middle-aged woman passing by for help. She stopped and took a long while to elucidate for this dull and slow-headed bird the sea of change in the surrounding geography.
Then she hurriedly left. She had to run not to lose any more minutes at a blinking green light at the next crosswalk. Thanks to her selfless and kind help, I could find my way at last. Her kindness reminded me of the fact that we human beings are interdependent on one another for our well-being.
The first thing I liked about my new apartment on the day we moved in was that the elevator stopped on the second floor to let us carry things in it into my apartment. The janitor hinted that some neighbors might not like to see us use it, after he informed us about the elevator.
I doubted they had the right to. Anyway it was great, for we remembered elevators that were preset not to operate for those living on the second floor of the apartment building we used to live in years before, as my family had happened to live on the second floor there, too.
We usually do not use the elevator, of course. We need not. It takes time to wait for it to come down to me most of the time. It is much quicker for me to fly down one floor or up the steps with my strong legs if I am not carrying anything heavy.
Even when I am with my bike, I prefer to walk pushing it up or down the steps because I don't like holding its front wheel up in the elevator car to fit it into its cramped space.
But the other day I pushed the elevator button after a long abstention because I was pulling a heavily-loaded, wheeled trunk behind me. I thought I was entitled to.
An elderly woman was inside when the door of the elevator opened, which had glided many floors down before it stopped. As I got in, seeing that she was getting off, I spoke up, "We are on the second floor," because I somehow knew she mistakenly thought she was on the first floor.
She got off nevertheless and got in again, after looking around and confirming where she was for herself. She must be a little stubborn, I thought to myself at that moment.
"I mean the elevator does not stop on the second floor," she said to me, staring at me with a dubious as well as inquiring look. I wondered what she really meant. Did she mean that she had not known it stops on the second floor?
But her stern facial expression seemed to show that she was protesting I was doing something she did not like. She looked as if demanding an explanation on what was happening. I kept silent, asking myself, did she not see it stop and what more could she want to know.
Although her stiff look soon melted away of its own accord at my reticence and intentional distancing, she may not have wanted to share the convenience of using the lift with this middle-aged man. I could not free myself from such a thought for a long while.
Could people be so grudging and unkind, I wondered? There was no other way in which I could interpret her sharp remark and cold expression.
The writer is a freelancer operating in Seoul, and can be reached at bwahn-0@hanmail.net.