Man Provides Perspective Shifting Story About Canteen Guy

What starts as a story about a guy's irritation over another guy's lateness to the job, ends up manifesting into an eye-opening rollercoaster, where the tardiness is clearly absolutely justified. We can all benefit from stories like this that are able to shift one's perspective. 

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  • 01
    Text - Can you write something that will fundamentally change how I see the world? Neman Ashraf, Police constable Answered Jan 22 · Upvoted by Randy Nino, MA Psychology, University of California, San Diego (2003) and Madhu Sharma, MA Eng Litt & Psychology, Sri Krishnadevaraya University (2.
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  • 02
    Text - One morning, I phoned the canteen guy in our police station to quickly bring me some breakfast because I was starving. "Right away, sir," he said, but nevertheless arrived late in my office. By that time I was already furious for having had to wait nearly an hour for him but I said nothing to him.
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  • 03
    Text - This scene happened again and again. Sometimes, l'd call him in the morning only to learn that he'd be on his way to the police station with his elder brother (who used to help him) and that he'll be there soon to prepare a nice breakfast and tea for me. Usually, he made me wait those long, irksome minutes unnecessarily. I had never visited the canteen as it's outside our boundary walls and because there wasn't a need for me to go there, I used to just order the food over the phone. Not o
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  • 04
    Text - Suddenly, I stopped eating from there altogether. I knew they would notice the loss of business since I was a frequent and reliable customer and also because most of my other colleagues had never even eaten from his canteen before. Instead, they would go eat outside. He'd often pass by my room, expecting me to order something and watching some waiter bring me food from a nearby restaurant. I felt I had every good reason to justify what I did because I just needed better services but I mus
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  • 05
    Text - A few days later, I had some free time and was walking around. Somehow I ended up at the canteen in the morning. I saw him arriving on the bike with his brother, stopped at the canteen's door. He parked the bike and then carried his elder brother on his back like a dead weight and went inside the canteen and laid him on a table. His brother, as was clearly obvious, was completely physically handicapped, with disabled and shrunken legs due to polio.
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  • 06
    Text - I stood there watching.. I witnessed his sweat and heavy breathing due to carrying a huge man roughly twice his own weight. I mean.just looking at this scene was tiresome and fatiguing.
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  • 07
    Text - He said Hi to me and got on with cooking. That afternoon I called him to learn more about his story and it simply shook me. Though I knew he was a family man, and a father of four, and that his brother lived with him but he never mentioned his brother's disability. So he came and we talked. He said.
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  • 08
    Sitting
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  • 09
    Text - "My brother got sick from polio in early childhood and since then, he couldn't walk or get cured even after going back and forth in hospitals. Life moved on, our parents died and since then my brother has lived with me... I take care him every step of the way. I carry him to bed, to the toilet, to this very canteen. I'm a husband and father that which brings all sorts of responsibilities and time constraints but somehow I make it work. I have to."
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  • 10
    Human
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  • 11
    Text - "Yes, keeping up with him makes me slow and less productive but so be it. My brother helps me here by making the tea all day long and I cook and serve the food." "I can't abandon my brother for he wouldn't survive without me."
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  • 12
    Text - And here I was. istening to him but pitying my own pathetic self for actually holding that mild bitterness against him for pissing me off time and again, without knowing or having the need of knowing.
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  • 13
    Text - Indeed I'm not as empathetic as I usually boast of being. at least in this specific case. Sometimes we don't know the reasons why, but other times we do know that there might be more to the story.
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  • 14
    Text - But we still prefer to ignore that simply to think or say to ourselves, "why should I care?" Well, we wouldn't know the answer unless we actually pay just a little bit of attention with care (compassion). And doing that might answer the obvious question of "Why".
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