Sunday Blog 194 – 20th July 2025
I don’t know if anyone needs to hear this nugget of wisdom from Fred Rogers’ mum. If you’ve never heard of Fred Rogers, he was a TV presenter, depicted in the biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood in 2019, played by Tom Hanks. His mum advised him to “look for the helpers, you’ll always find people who are helping” when overwhelmed by scary news stories.
I was listening to an old episode of Tara Brach’s podcast, something I do regularly as a kind of energy re-set, an anti-dote to all the things on my social media feed.
“Look for the helpers,” I heard, and the first person who came to mind was the man at Murdoch station. This is my local train station in Perth. It has a bus station adjoining it to try and convince us to get out of our cars and into public transport. You walk through the bus stop to enter the train station.
He’s a bus station staff member, always with his clipboard, his mask, socks pulled up to the knees. I’m not exactly sure what his paid role is, but I do know he says hello to every single commuter on our way into the train station, and good bye as we head out. Day after day. Every single one of us.
Perhaps because I always catch his eye, he might add a little more to his greeting. “Happy Tuesday”, he might say in the morning, and “Safe home.” He does this for zero dollars of extra pay. Perhaps that’s where the magic comes in. I feel like I will have a good Tuesday, that I will get home safe, just because of his greeting.
At the end of May, I made my way home from work with a very large bouquet of flowers from colleagues for my 60th. He was too busy to greet me properly that day, but the next time he saw me, he said again, “Happy Birthday.”
He makes such a simple gesture, and yet it feels so complete, so kind.