In recent months, perhaps since I left the country, most of the time I feel relaxed and I’m naturally kind toward people. They probably sense my inner state because the interactions are almost always pleasant. But today, I experienced the opposite—I experienced firsthand how distance from myself leads to distance from others.

Before dusk, I’m on my way to the airport, should be flying from Berlin to Israel, and for some reason my mobile internet isn’t working. I remembered most of the way to the station—a fifteen-minute walk with a few turns in light snow—but I couldn’t find the station and started to get anxious. After all, I was without internet 😄

I saw a man and a woman standing on the street.

The Encounter

I approached the man and asked if he could open a hotspot for me, and he plainly said, “No”. I was surprised. I don’t remember the last time someone refused to help me, and with such harsh directness. This directness, by the way, is a German thing; they feel comfortable saying what they think without apologizing, and I usually appreciate it, but this time it felt just harsh.

I approached the woman and asked her the same thing, and she also said no. I thought maybe they have an issue with sharing their internet, so I asked then if she could check the way to the station on her phone for me, and again she plainly said “No”. I asked her if she knows where to catch the line I need to the airport, and she pointed her finger in a direction.

Poorly Functioning While Overwhelmed

I arrived at a large station and got tangled up there too, until I finally found my platform. I had just missed the next train after the one I planned to be on, and I had to wait for a while before the next one comes.

I noticed I was overwhelmed; strong feelings arose in me following the coldness I experienced from that encounter with the man and woman. I imagined how a needy person in a worse position than mine could get to a really low place after being ignored in a time of need. Even a thought about the Holocaust crossed my mind. I allowed myself to rest until the overwhelm passed—it took about fifteen minutes (I’m practiced by now)—and then I asked myself what happened here. More precisely, I asked myself, “Where is the love?” and also, “What’s good about this situation that seem so bad?”

Returning to Myself

To answer the first question I felt I should try to understand what the man and woman experienced when I approached them and asked them to share their internet connection with me. Someone like me, not quite dressed as a local Berliner, appears at 5:00 a.m., on a dark street, looking stressed, and makes an unusual, perhaps even suspicious request. I thought that in their mental state—which didn’t seem particularly vibrant either—this encounter probably raised concern for their own safety.

The answer to the second question is more personal: “how does this story contribute to my higher good?”. I realized that after enjoying a fairly prolonged period of pleasant flow stemming from trust, suddenly within a few days I faced many challenges that came in one after the other—visa issues, flight changes, money issues, canceled plans, relationship issues with a close friend, a whole week without communication with Naomi, my daughter, and now this strange and unpleasant situation.

Two answers came to me for the question, “What’s good about this?”:

First, the bar of my challenges is rising so that I can further practice my ability to trust and surrender, even in more extreme situations.

Second, it seems that in order to produce a pleasant encounter—that is, to feel each other’s humanity and bring warmth to the encounter—the less present and more closed-hearted the person opposite me is, the more it requires me to be present and open-hearted. It turns out that indeed, distance from myself leads to distance from others. As the first answer, this answer encourages me as well to practice my trust and surrender.