I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude lately. I suppose, deep down, I know I have a lot to be grateful for. After many failed attempts, I’ve officially decided self-help books are mostly fiction (you’re welcome), gratitude journals are an environmental waste, and listing five things before bed is nothing more than a repetitive, boring activity that’s probably more efficient than counting sheep. I mean, if all you do is acknowledge what you’re grateful for, what does that actually do? Seriously. I think gratitude is supposed to cost something. It demands that you slow down, inconvenience yourself, and acknowledge another person’s existence beyond the role they’ve been assigned in your day.
This all stems from a few days ago, when I watched an Uber Eats rider come off his Lime bike through the window of my bus. It was one of those miserable Sydney days, absolutely biblical rain. His bike slipped and suddenly everything was here, there, everywhere. Containers split open, drinks rolled across the road, and every meal he was supposed to deliver was swallowed by the gutter. I watched him, felt genuinely sad and told myself I should get off and offer help, that if it wasn’t pouring with rain I would.
My second thought, and I hate admitting this, was, God, I could never do that, as if somehow his job and mine existed on different planets. Like I hadn’t scrubbed pub floors six months earlier, spent nights cleaning up other people’s vomit after they’d had the time of their lives because I needed the money. Or spent thousands of dollars collecting university degrees that eventually led me back to where I started, if not worse, with exactly $982 sitting in my bank account in my thirties.
People are always surprised when I say things like that. Instagram and perhaps, to my own credit or demise has contributed to it. I somehow did an incredible job convincing everyone that travel equals wealth, that airports, mountain ranges and countries with difficult names somehow mean success. It all creates the illusion that the person behind the photos must have endless opportunities and an even more endless bank account. The reality is considerably less glamorous, trust me. Most of my travel happened because it was my job. To be clear, this isn’t a sob story, it’s simply the truth, which is why I’m still so uncomfortable with what I thought. It wasn’t solidarity, it was distance, maybe worse… ego. Who the fuck do I think I am?
I’ve been wondering lately whether one of the greatest tricks we’ve ever played on ourselves is convincing ourselves that because something is someone’s job, it somehow stops being our responsibility.
When I worked in pubs and people spoke to me like I was beneath them, I told myself, it’s fine, it’s my job. When someone left vomit all over the bathroom floor, it’s my job. When customers clicked their fingers, ignored my name badge and treated me as though I were part of the furniture, I accepted it because that’s what hospitality teaches you to do. You wear the uniform, so somehow it becomes your problem.
But is that enough? Why have we accepted that “it’s their job” is an excuse for forgetting they’re still a person?
The Uber Eats rider fell off his bike and, almost without realising it, my brain filed it away as his problem. The app would deal with it, Uber MUST deal with it. Someone would deal with it, it’d okay. Except there wasn’t a “someone.” In that moment there was just a bloke sitting in the rain, picking up somebody else’s dinner probably blaming himself having a really fucking miserable time.
How quickly we convince ourselves we’re different from people who, in another life or even this one, just on a different day (if we’re honest) could have been us. We create our own imagined importance. I remember promising myself that day that I would do better.
…………Then, a few days later, I saw a young woman walking alone in torrential rain along a highway, which felt odd enough that I noticed her immediately. I had room in the car and I probably could have pulled over. Instead I convinced myself I’d cause an accident, or she’d think I was strange, or maybe she’d murder me. The human brain is remarkable at finding reasons… excuses.
I’ll never know because I never asked. I kept driving, and I’ve thought about her far more than she has ever thought about me. I’ve thought about how, if that had been my own daughter one day, I’d hope someone stopped. I thought about the time I got stranded at a border overseas and a family drove two hours out of their way just to make sure I was dropped directly at my hotel door. Not nearby or close enough, smack bang right to the entrance.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’ve built so much of my life encouraging people to embrace other cultures. I talk endlessly about hospitality in Afghanistan, Syria.. blah blah. I love telling those stories because they remind people that kindness exists in places they’re taught to fear and quietly answer the question I hear all the time: “But were you actually safe?”
I don’t know if it’s a Western mentality, but somewhere along the way we’ve and yes, I know I really mean I’ve become exceptional at outsourcing our humanity.
I see the Golden Arches and don’t think twice. You’d better believe I pull into the drive-through and happily feed the corporate machine because it’s convenient and, annoyingly, delicious. I tap my card, collect my food, and someone else cooked it. Someone else packaged it, delivered it, maybe cleaned the floor afterwards. Did I show them gratitude? Did I acknowledge that the jobs they do are, some would argue Including myself harder than sitting behind a desk all day?
Have we become so efficient that we’ve accidentally removed ourselves from one another? I fear that in Sydney, convenience has quietly come at the cost of community. Or maybe I’m being unfair.
That’s the frustrating part about getting older. I seem to have accumulated more experiences than I ever imagined possible and somehow ended up with fewer answers than I had at twenty.
The philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I didn’t make that rider fall nor did I didn’t create the system that has people cycling through torrential rain to deliver somebody else’s dinner. I didn’t invent an economy that tells us convenience is king but responsibility doesn’t necessarily end where guilt does.
What I do know is that I don’t want to romanticise the cultures I’ve visited while failing to practise the lessons they taught me once I come home. So, moving forward, gratitude will look less like writing down what I’m thankful for and more like remembering the person who packed my groceries, rounding up the tip even when I’m watching my own bank account, asking someone’s name every time even if they think I’m annoying and stopping the car next time or getting off the bus.
I KNOW none of those things solve inequality or dismantle corporations. They don’t change the fact that many people are working impossibly hard just to survive, but for a moment in time they stop us forgetting that there is a human being standing in front of us.
I keep thinking about that rider.
I keep thinking about that girl in the rain.
Not because I believe those moments define me, but because they revealed something about me that I didn’t particularly like. The truth is, I do walk around with a little wool pulled over my eyes. I’m more hypocritical than I’d like to admit. I care deeply about people, yet somehow still manage to miss opportunities to prove it. Maybe that’s the contradiction of being human.
This isn’t a lecture because I’m writing it as much for myself as anyone else.
I don’t know how to fix inequality, and I don’t believe dismantling billion-dollar corporations is the answer simply because they’ve convinced us convenience is worth more than community. What I do know is that I never want to become so efficient at living my own life that I stop noticing everyone else’s.
Gratitude, I’ve realised, isn’t saying thank you for what you have, it’s behaving as though the people around you matter.
Maybe it isn’t.
It’s simply another day’s thought.
PARIS HAILWOOD 
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