My responsibility

Last night, arriving home at the same time, my husband JC spotted a car parked on the side of the road with its headlights still turned on. We did not know who the car belonged to. This being London it is quite common not to know your neighbours, you just get on with your day-to-day life and maybe say a 'hi' and 'bye' to your neighbours if you bump into them - that's about it though.

Anyway, if I had been on my own yesterday I would not have taken the initiative to find out who the car's owner was, because it could have been any house on the street. As it was JC, he was quite adamant to look for the owner of the car. After knocking on 5 doors, he found the car's owner, a grey haired man nearing his 60s. He was very grateful because he knew that he would have been in trouble the next day.

When we went back to our flat I asked JC what made him do that? Was it because he wanted to do something nice for someone or was there another reason behind it? He said he felt responsible having seen the car and knowing the despair the person would experience when he/she went to start his/her car the next morning only to find that the engine was dead initiated his action.

I thought to myself (and thinking aloud here), if we all felt such a sense of responsibility towards the world, the world would be a much nicer place to live in. I am not at all innocent in this aspect, I too have been/am negligent and sometimes play ignorant to what is going on around me and to what we are doing to the environment.

This does not mean that I am going to start knocking on the front doors of my neighbours if that's what you think, but I will definitely pay more attention to them when I meet them at their front gates or on my way out, rather than just mumbling 'hi' as I dash in or out of the house.