Walk on by?

What would you do if you saw someone in need on the streets of London? On the underground? Or anywhere else for that matter? It's such a tricky situation if you happen across people in need when on your commute or thinking about what to have for lunch/dinner/snack. Admittedly our society isn't really conducive to intervening in such situations. Horror stories abound of The Good Samaritan gone wrong.
A few months ago, I took First Aid training for the work place with St John Ambulance. It's a one day course and enough to (hopefully) save someone from the worst case scenario as the ambulance is on its way as well as dealing with the obvious minor injuries in the office. You know, paper cuts and that sort of thing.
Shortly after the course I got chatting with a friend about whether or not we would stop and save someone having a heart attack in the street, they mentioned that they wouldn't give them the "kiss of life" and would merely walk past with the kind of anonymity that London seems to bring. Personally, I like to think and certainly hope that I would have the guts to stop and do what I could to help. Recent advice from the British Heart Foundation has been published to say that "just hard CPR" is an effective way to help someone in danger for those who are concerned about giving the kiss of life or who have not had training. Check out the video if you've not seen it, of Vinnie Jones in the campaign I think it's really effective and hopefully instils in people the mentality that you don't have to snog someone to make a difference.
Whatever your feelings are, kiss of life or otherwise, you can never truly predict how you will react until you are confronted with the situation. There are some incredible stories out there of human efforts to rescue their fellow man and these are stories to be inspired by. I recently read about the yachtsman Pete Goss who during a round the world yacht race in 1996, turned his boat back into hurricane conditions to save the life of fellow sailor Raphael Dinelli. While his story may be extreme and there aren't many of us that would face that kind of test, it shows the lengths that some people are prepared to go to when a fellow human is in trouble.
I think increasingly in London, people do walk past someone in need partly through a fear of getting in too deep (or worse). All you can do is trust your instincts. I'm not trying to preach here, just musing on the topic. After all, we Londoners walk by someone in need on a daily basis, you just don't realise it unless it's immediately obvious.
Recently I experienced two admittedly small incidents of people in need but they've definitely got me thinking. The first, a girl in her early twenties had a seizure on the tube. It was 8.40am the Jubilee line was absolutely packed after filling up at London Bridge. I jumped up and shoved the girl in my seat where she seized for the second time, her body going stiff and her eyes rolling back in her head. I looked for a medical bracelet or necklace to see if she were epileptic perhaps or even diabetic but couldn't find one and she came to just in time to look at me as though I was going to rob her. I yelled for someone to give her water and at the next stop, Southwark, took her off the train. A lot of people were in the carriage but I was the only person who disembarked the train with her. Perhaps people assumed I knew her as I was first to react but perhaps people were just worried about being late for work. After a few minutes on the platform spent trying to advise her to go to hospital to no avail there was little more I could do other than continue with my own journey to the office. My main concern was that the platform guard seemed to think she had simply fainted when this was just not the case. Anyway, she was extremely grateful that I had helped her off the train but it got me thinking about my previous conversation with my colleague and how if they'd been there they would have let someone else deal with the situation, but we can't all have that attitude. Admittedly, I was nearest but that's just how it was. People were yelling to get her off the train but was this out of concern or because they were after the seat?
More recently, I was reminded of this incident by another happening that made me feel annoyed, frankly. I rarely listen to my ipod when I'm out and about, I like to have my wits about me and I tend to save it for the train or the bus. On this occasion I had my earphones in, though not particularly loud music. I was mainly focussing on what to have for dinner when through the music I heard a lady ask no one in particular if she was at the crossing. The lady had a white blind stick (is there a technical name for these?) and I assume she was partially blind. I turned to her to see what she was saying and removed my headphones, when I realised she was confused I helped her to the crossing she wanted to get to. As soon as it was safe I asked her to take my arm and she refused. At the other side, I asked if she needed further help as when we were crossing the road she couldn't keep a straight line in spite of refusing my offer for guidance. She refused my offer of help and was genuinely so rude and ungrateful I felt annoyed and irritated that I'd even helped her in the first place. A simple thank you just wouldn't go amiss.
I think the riots back in August had many of us questioning our sense of community as a nation. Increasingly our lives are carried out online, our education system is failing people, the economy is doom and gloom, have we just stopped caring for our fellow man or is it just that I live in a big, bad anonymous city? I'm just constantly let down by strangers.
On a more positive note, there are good people and one of my favourite things of a morning is to read the Metro paper's Good Deed Feed which tells stories of the kindness of strangers and loved ones that makes you feel a bit more at ease with the ways of the world, as Rob Green puts it in his blog, the feeling of good will is quite contagious. Let's hope we start to see a bit more of it in 2012.