Kindness is a delicate thread. It winds around us invisibly, able to be broken in a moment — a moment of impatience, irritation, selfishness.
Kindness is rather like the chimeric strength of democracy: its pillars seemingly robust and impervious, but really just held together by faith, obligation and the shared agreement to do the right thing.
The twin thread of kindness is civility, and in a scene that I witnessed this week, and will remember long into what may be yet another challenging year, I saw the very best of people in a tricky situation and it gave me great hope.
‘Righto we’ll give that a go’
My Qantas flight was all but boarded when the captain announced they were having trouble loading a rather large item into the hold. Hopefully we would be away in a few minutes. Those minutes passed, and then a flight attendant came and crouched down next to the passenger sitting on the aisle just over from me. As I was right next to her, and even though the crew members spoke in hushed, discreet tones, I could hear the exchange.
They were finding it impossible to get the passenger’s very large wheelchair on board, she said: would the couple like to go ahead on this flight, and Qantas would put the vehicle on a later flight; or would they like to deplane and go on that other flight with the wheelchair? The crew member kept her head close to the couple: she was softly spoken, apologetic, and kind.
The partner of the woman who needed the chair said he was sure it should fit if they just turned it a certain way. The crew member said she would go and tell that to the baggage handler.
A little later, a ground crew member appeared, heavily tattooed and impossible to miss in his high-vis, and he crouched beside the passenger. They just couldn’t get the thing on, he said: tell me about this trick of how to manoeuvre it? The partner calmly described the solution, and the staff member listened carefully: “Righto, we’ll give that a go”, and he left.
I did not want to stare at the couple. I could only imagine their anxiety and self-consciousness, and the sheer effort it took every day to move through the world with a significant disability. Her partner caught my eye, and we smiled ruefully at each other. Was there anything I could do to help, I asked pathetically (still very much my mother’s daughter, thinking I can solve anything).
The man said it was a new transport, and they had been assured it was able to be stowed. We half-shrugged at each other and hoped that would prove to be the case. The woman who needed the chair sat composed and quiet: I was in awe of her self-possession in that moment.
A group of people quietly waiting
Now, by this stage, we had all been waiting on the ground for more than half an hour. I’m sure Qantas won’t disagree when I say that as an almost weekly flyer, this is not an unusual thing. And as you know, the mood on such a delayed flight is by this point rather sour and angry. So, what was remarkable, and truthfully very moving about this moment, was how calm everyone on board seemed to be. I had my antennae out listening for the frustration — and there was none. Just a group of people quietly waiting for a very complex situation to be solved.
The baggage handler came back with the cabin crew member: they just couldn’t make it work. The chair was too big and too heavy. Would the passengers like to stay on or come off? They chose to leave.
I think if there is one thing I am going to remember most powerfully from this small but very meaningful moment in the lives of those of us on board that flight, it will be the memory of a plane-load of strangers sitting quietly, most with eyes averted or heads bowed, as we witnessed the vulnerability of a passenger with severe mobility challenges being elevated on a hoist out of her seat and off the plane.
I won’t describe it here, except to say that when the two passengers behind her were quietly asked if they could leave the plane to give them room, they did so without a murmur; that the two crew managing the move were gentle, careful and kind; and that something that normally happens away from our eyes was managed with admirable discretion.
After the couple left the plane, Captain Michael Egan came out of the cockpit, and he addressed us directly: it was a matter of great delicacy and disappointment, he said. The wheelchair weighed 195kg and had an unusual shape, so that the control joystick could be snapped off if they forced it inside. He was deeply apologetic to the passengers who had to leave and to us for the delay, but he knew we would understand the importance of someone with mobility issues having their transport with them. We were an hour delayed by the time we got underway.
The grace of civility
As we burst through the clouds, I sat thinking about the grace of civility.
Any one person in that long chain of events and people could have decided to be unpleasant: an overly-officious crew member; an impatient baggage-handler; an angry partner; a frustrated airport manager just wanting to get this plane out of the gate; or indeed any one of us passengers on the plane, starting to huff and puff about being late, and ratcheting up the tension and the stress.
But no one did. Everyone was accepting. Everyone projected kindness. And that moment glows with me as a wrinkle of sweetness in a rough and brutal time.
I have not been able to establish what this experience was like for this couple which, you can only imagine, had already had the most complex morning trying to get themselves to the airport and all their essentials checked onto the flight. I remain so impressed at this woman’s energy, commitment and sheer grit to insist on her right to move through the world, and her reasonable expectation that reasonable allowances would be made to allow her to do so. Bloody good on her.
The academic Christopher Schaberg, who wrote The Textual Life of Airports, has become well-known for his reflections on how airports have become such knots of negativity. He says that in the day-to-day grind of flight, we abandon the “thoughtful exercise” of the soft skills of “understanding across differences”. But as my fellow passengers showed that morning, we can always rediscover them. And that will be my beacon this year. I’ll follow that light of civility.
Have a safe and happy weekend and you can read about men who need friends, women who don’t need men and a famous con artist who needed a morality transplant. And let’s start our year in music large, shall we? If you’d not heard of the multi award-wining British singer RAYE before the Grammy awards last week, then you’ll be so happy to meet her here: where we all share a love for the cinematic, where we nurse a broken heart for our lost loves of Amy Winehouse and George Michael, and where we agree a soul chorus can never have too many members.
RAYE went supernova here — please let me know how much you love it.
And go well.
Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.
