The Stranger on the Train

Late one winter, a woman boarded a train at the end of a hard year. She had lost a parent. She had lost a job. She had lost the version of her life she had been planning. She took a window seat and stared out at the dark.

At the next station, an older man sat down beside her. He said good evening. He asked where she was travelling. He did not know her. He did not know her year. After a while she told him a little of it — not much, just enough. He listened. When the train slowed for his stop, he stood up, gathered his coat, and said quietly: 'It sounds like a year that took a great deal from you. I hope the next one returns at least a small thing.'

Then he was gone. She never learned his name. She rode the rest of the way home with his sentence in her head. In the months that followed, the year did return a small thing — and then another, and then another. She believes, still, that the man on the train did nothing extraordinary. He was simply willing, for five minutes, to treat a stranger as a person.

Most of the kindness we receive in life is from people whose names we will never know. Most of the kindness we give will be the same. We forget how cheap it is to be the stranger on someone else's train.

Look up from your phone, once a day. Say good evening. You do not know whose year you are about to ease.