If You Want a Helpful Man, Let Him Help
The artful dance of giving and receiving
My heart started to race as I gazed at the departure board in the middle of Penn Station in New York City. I was headed back home to Boston after a conference. If you’ve ever made this trip, you’ll likely know that there is some level of anxiety that goes along with it. This was before covid when people were still traveling, and the station was mobbed as usual.
The track that my train would arrive on wouldn’t be announced until moments before it was scheduled to leave. Once the track was confirmed, I would need to race against hundreds of other passengers while trying not to lose my bags in an attempt to ensure a desirable seat. Sometimes I’ve tried to guess which track the train would be on, but I was usually wrong.
“Where are you headed?” a man asked me as I stood semi-frozen with my eyes affixed to the board. “Boston,” I replied. Coincidentally, he was going there too. We started to make small talk. We were both guessing the train to Boston would be on track 13W. As usual, we were wrong. The train would depart from track 6. There is no east or west for that particular track, which led to some confusion. However, this man — let’s call him Bob, helped me navigate the crowd to track 6, made sure I found a seat on the very full train, and lifted my bag into…
