This happened just a few days ago. I was on a jeepney, on my way home, on a rainy July afternoon. As in – even with a large umbrella, I was soaked from head to toe, and my bag was shining wet as well.
A few minutes into the trip, a woman in front of me suddenly offered me a piece of paper towel. “Huh?” was my immediate reaction. Why the heck would this total stranger give me a paper towel? But then I realized that she probably saw that my still dripping bag, and was offering me the paper towel to dry it (and myself off, as well). So I accepted her offer.
It was one of those “little acts of kindness” on public transport that sticks into your mind. Another one is an incident, a few weeks back, when a group of students riding a jeepney I had just gotten off from called me back to say I dropped a P500 bill inside the jeep and gave it back to me. (It was fortunate they found that bill; it was my last money and I was then at the “taghirap” phase before payday.)
It's often heartwarming how total strangers would often help you out while you’re riding public transport. From simply telling you there’s something wrong (like your money’s sticking out, or you left something) to actually helping out in cases of emergency. Which makes me wonder: do our preference of transport modes actually influence our morality and how we treat others?
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I’ve been wondering about this primarily because of accusations of some netizens that car-owners here in the Philippines have acquired a sense of “self-entitlement,” thinking that the roads belong to them and to them alone.
Here’s what I had to say in this column space a few years back: “As a car owner, you’ve been given a great privilege – and a great responsibility to ensure that your rights on the road will not encroach into the rights of commuters and pedestrians.
“Also, can we remove the mindset that having a car makes us ‘superior’ to the ordinary folk who had to endure waiting for hours just to catch a ride home?”
You know, I now tend to believe that our “car-centric” thinking – a carry-on from the Americans, who had overly emphasized their private-car manufacturing industry at the expense of mass transport system – has produced a breed of Filipinos who are selfish, over-entitled and uncaring of the people around them.
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