I lived in a house with 6 girls. That's two Chinese, 2 Indian, and 1 Japanese lady. Oh, and I'm the 6th one. We were all pretty self sufficient. Each one cooked their own food, cleaned their own dishes and so on.
I was staying in Singapore at this point, pursuing my studies. And I was a mess, to say the least. With constant deadlines, a million assignments and low resources, I had a pretty hard time trying to keep up. It would take an hour for me to get to university and likewise to get back. So everyday, I was completely exhausted by the time I got home. But the hell didn’t end there. My roommate and I had to cook, clean and do laundry among other things, no matter how tired we were.
During my term finals, it got worse. I would even skip lunch or dinner sometimes, just to get extra time to study. And the dishes were always piling up. But I started to notice every now and then, that sometimes - the dishes would suddenly vanish. They were cleaned and neatly kept on the side. I first thought it was my roommate, but then I started to notice it was at times that we both weren’t home.
One such evening, with the onslaught of an exam the next day, the dishes were piled up to the brim. And I was sitting on the dining table cramming my brain with information. But in the back of my head I had the horrid reminder that I still had the dishes to do. At that point one of my flatmates - the Japanese lady offered to do our dishes. I ABSOLUTELY refused. I felt terrible. Realising that our dishes were causing even the others inconvenience I said I’d do them immediately. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She said to me “Natasha, this is your time to study. You have a bunch of stuff to do. I’m working, and I have some free time. So it’s not too much trouble to help you out by doing this small act. One day you’ll get an opportunity to do the same for someone else in need. Think of it as a good deed to pass on”
I’m a fairly cynical person. And I come from a country where I think if someone meets with an accident on the road, most people just drive off and don’t even look back twice. I had NEVER come across a more selfless, more kind person in my entire life. And that little act of doing our dishes… the little packets of cookies she passed onto us every now and then, and delicious tuna-rice rolls my Japanese flat-made me every now and then, made my entire experience so much better and so much easier.
She made ME want to be a better person. And I can never thank her enough for it. I always look forward to helping someone out. Because I always feel like I need to pass the good deed on.
-This one’s for you Hiroko-
-Natasha F