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Every crisis brings with it moments of self-reflection, and I’ve learnt so many things already that I know that life henceforth is going to be even better than what I’ve been blessed with.
All it takes is a little click somewhere in the back of your mind, to look for a place where all the people you’ve looked up to, come back to you with their wisdom. Like every one of you, I’m fortunate too, to have some of those amazing individuals in my life. But some of these people needn’t be in your life per se.
One such extraordinary individual is the iconic physician Patch Adams. Despite growing up in a war torn time and leading a trying life, here was a man who wanted to other communities through medicine. But very soon, he gave it up, only to gift something even more remarkable: Healing through humour. To me, “healing” carries far more positivity than “treatment”. However, his methods were unusual, controversial and received very little financial support in the early days. And then he set up the Gesundheit Institute.
His story inspired the Hollywood movie by the same name, ‘Patch Adams’ and remains one of my all-time favourites. Life can hit us pretty hard sometimes, and we may not have control over its impact, but we can definitely soften the blow with a helping hand. That’s perhaps what kindness can do. The movie has innumerable instances of how Patch Adams, portrayed by none other than the Late Robin Williams, does everything he can to heal children through his child like humour.
Even Robin Williams taught that despite our own suffering, the voice that speaks for love can never be extinguished. Or of our generation. A story recently went around on Reddit about Williams; it goes like this…
“A guy is with his family in San Francisco. The man’s father has lost both his parents in a really horrific way and was obviously having a rough time on the night of the memorial service. It was about 2:30 a.m., and the family — mourning and in dress clothes and probably just dragging — went to a doughnut shop, because the man’s father wanted a doughnut, and who says no on a night like that.”
“Anyway, Robin Williams just happened to be in the shop too, the story goes. He’s eating and drinking coffee and — when this family needed it — Williams was kind to them, right there, in a doughnut shop at 2:30 in the morning.”
He made the man’s parents smile on a dark day, and that is what the Redditor remembered most.
“I couldn’t tell you what they laughed about, but I remember seeing my parents laugh and smile for the first time in weeks. My dad remembered that so fondly. He always said it was exactly what he had needed in that time, and that he appreciated the way Robin Williams went about it,” wrote the Redditor.
“It wasn’t that he was a celebrity; he was just a nice guy who saw a bunch of sad folks and realized he could probably make a difference. And he did.”
On that note, I am going to conclude this blog with the saying that a little kindness goes a long way in the lives of those who have lost all their hope and are looking for light. Be that guiding light. Just be kind to people. With everything going around the world, a little compassion towards others may change lives for the better.
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