Every so often you get someone wandering into your life that you actually have the opportunity to help. Really actually help. The last time this happened for me it was when I had a student who was legally blind, I set him up on how to use the digital assistant on his computer so that he could get back in touch with his grandkids via voice dictation, and he – and his daughter – cried. Before that it was the gentleman who had me type his emails every night on the world cruise, and by the end of that voyage it felt like I knew his daughter and his cat both.
Tonight, a fellow wandered into my Q&A session. A little confused, a little confident, a little lost…a lot somehow…sad. As it turned out, his wife passed away a year ago, and he is on this trip to try and distract himself from the terrible sadness of a house that’s now empty. As it is he’s trying ot learn everything, all this new stuff that he now doesn’t have anyone to help him learn, or anyone to learn it for. Something about this man…touched me. His requests weren’t difficult, he only wanted to know how to load his pictures from his phone onto his laptop; so I showed him that, and how ot make them bigger so they’re easier to see, how to delete the ones he didn’t need. Just little stuff, but …he said I had given him a little bit of hope.
Hope, I gave someone hope…
I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it many times again: sometimes I hate ship life, the hours are long and the days are often hard, and sometimes even the work you love is totally thankless…
But sometimes…in fact most of the time…
Freya do I ever love my job….
You should have put a tissue warning on this one. I’m glad you got to see how much you help people. I’m also glad that the people you could help got loving, kind, compassionate you; anyone less may have ended with a totally different experience and outcome for them.