Fear and Conscience

Nobody is perfect. As much as I try to practice what I preach, there are situations in which I am ashamed of myself for not doing so. After all, I'm only human.

Some time ago, before Christmas I think, I was travelling from Dortmund (Germany) to Meppel (Netherlands) by train. I had a stop at Venlo with some time in between, so I think I decided to go for a drink. Whatever I wanted to do (I travelled the route a lot in the past half year, and I can't remember what I did every time I stopped), I went to the ATM to take out some money when I heard shouting behind me. I turned around, my guitar in hand, and went to see what the shouting was about.

It turned out an employee of the Dutch Railway in a new white jacket was attacking a man, pushing him into a bush that was placed on the pavewalk in front of the station. I found out later that the man under attack had only asked the Railway-employee if the jacket was something new. An understandable question, since the concept is relatively new. To be honest, I don't know what it is about either. The other man was shouting in something akin to a parody of the dutch language that the first man had insulted him for some reason. Anyway, before I found out that, the two of them were still fighting. I wanted to drag them apart or at least do something. But the fear, fed by stories of people that got themselves killed trying to break up fights, took the better of me. I was not the only one to just stand there and look on, but that didn't help my conscience later. Thank the light security broke up the fight, but it took over 5 minutes for them to even know what was going on. Nobody so much as moved a muscle to tell them.

What I find most embarrassing though is that there were at least 20 people, and nobody, including me, made a move to have these people team up to break apart a fight consisting of 2 people. Not even a word in that direction was said.

As I said.. nobody is perfect. However, we can try.