I believe that all humans are inherently good. I realize that this idea is unpopular and may sound naive but I truly believe it. Since everyone is going through something unique and different in their life, no one has any place to judge them or say they aren’t good because of it. These beliefs started when I was twelve, after my mother and I had left the English countryside for a girls day in the exciting city of London. Since going into the city was a special occurrence, that day my mom and I lived a life of privilege; we ate at a little pub for lunch, saw a musical that I had recently been obsessed with, and then ate dinner at a fancy steakhouse.

After eating dinner, my mom glanced at her phone and realized what time it was. We suddenly had fifteen minutes to get all the way across the city to make our planned train; but even though we ran to the tube, we missed our train by three minutes which meant that we had to wait forty-five minutes for the next one to come.

Entering the station, the first thing I noticed was how small it was. It was big enough to host two shops, but since those took up a lot of space, the station felt very cramped. There were a lot of windows but that didn’t make a difference as it was already way too dark to provide light from outside. There were some hanging lights as well; fluorescent and just bright enough to provide needed sight across the station. I also distinctly remember smelling peppermint, and being surprised that the stereotype of train stations smelling bad wasn’t true. After sitting down on a bench to wait for the next train, I decided to people watch. I witnessed a mother put her newborn child into a pastel pink stroller. I turned to look at an old man reading a book. He looked quite content but every so often he would scrunch up his face, as if he was disgusted with what he had read. I then turned again, and someone new caught my eye.

I noticed a man sitting against a tall beige pillar that looked way too angular to be comfortable. It was two degrees Celsius and he was wearing shorts and a tank top; shivering from the cold, he had scraggly brown hair, and looked overwhelmingly tired. He wasn’t sleeping, but as he was staring out into the distance, it didn’t look like there was any life in his eyes. Propped up next to him against the pillar was a sign that read, “Homeless. Please donate”. My mom and I dropped a couple of pounds into the plastic cup next to him and then parted ways.

Waiting in a small train station though, even when I tried not to, I found myself looking back at the man more than I’d like to admit. I started people watching again; I noticed a man eating a chocolate bar, a little girl crying because she was tired, and a young couple watching something on their phone but my eyes kept darting back to the homeless man.

A couple of minutes later, another man came up; he had neat blonde hair and was fully clothed with a warm coat and a fluffy scarf. Unlike the first man, this man looked happy inside, and his eyes were radiant with positive energy.

Even though I never met these two men, I decided right there and then that the first man’s name was Joe and the second man’s name was Alexander. I named the first man Joe because he looked quite average. The second I saw him, the phrase “average Joe” came to mind and that name just seemed to fit. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Alexander looked interesting and wealthy because his neat hair and clothes looked expensive. I had recently been watching a show with a character named Alexander and the character also looked very wealthy so I decided to name the second man after him.

Alexander sat down against the pillar and the two men chatted. I couldn't hear what they were saying but it looked like they were both very engaged in the conversation. Alexander put up his pointer finger, as if to single a ‘one’, and then stood up. He walked into a nearby ‘Primark’ (a popular department store in England) and a few minutes later, he walked out with a big white bag.

Alexander approached Joe and pulled something out of the bag; at first, it just looked big, blue and fluffy but it took me a while to figure out what exactly it was. Alexander took the object out of the bag and extended it to its fullest size and I then realized it was a blanket. Joe looked up and tears started to form in his eyes. He jumped up and hugged the other man. They stayed like that for several minutes until Alexander pulled away to catch his train- the same train as us.

My mom grabbed my hand and started walking towards the train that had just arrived at the station. Getting dragged towards the tracks, I wasn’t looking straight, I was looking at Joe. I couldn’t turn my head away from him and I stayed like that for so long that my neck started to ache. He was sitting there, snuggled into his new blanket, sobbing. It was the first time I had seen a person in public (let alone a grown man) cry like that.

The whole time we were on the train, my thoughts drifted back to what I had just witnessed. A true act of kindness, right in front of my eyes. More than dropping a couple of pounds into a cup like what my mom and I did, Alexander went out of his way and did something that would directly help Joe’s life. Giving him a blanket, the warmth that surrounded their relationship was more than just physical. I could feel the love and acceptance that Alexander was giving Joe while getting to know him as more than just a homeless man. That man may have been homeless for a number of reasons, but Alexander didn’t see that; he just saw another human that needed help.

This was the first time that I understood the goodness that human’s hold. This was the first time I got a glimpse into a philosophy that I live my life by, “Humans are inherently good, and you never know what someone is going through”. Every time I meet someone new, I try to keep an open mind, and not judge them until I understand who they truly are. This all started that day in the train station after seeing a stranger do something truly kind for another person. Throughout the day, you constantly hear of everything bad in the world, you never hear of the good people do for each other, and this experience made me realize that it is there, you just have to look for it.