Pay it Forward
A few years back, when traveling for the first time in New Zealand with , I ran into some car problems at one of the freedom camping sites.
Made such a rookie mistake by not checking the van’s lights before going to bed (in the van), both of us woke up to a depleted van battery, and obviously, the car couldn’t start. We realized this late at night, but it was too late to do anything. We discussed and decided to wait until early tomorrow morning, and hoping that the ranger was going to be around for us to ask for help.
When we woke up the next morning, I went out to the ranger’s office aka the trailer house. This was around 530 am. No one was in the office. None of the other campers were up yet at that point in time. Had to repeat the track, back and forth for a few times, to no avail.
By around 730 am, some of the other campers were already awake and preparing their campervans to move on to their next location. At this point, we decided to start asking around for help. We were lucky that one of the campervans had a jumper cable, but wasn’t prepared to jump our battery for us. They gave us a limit of 30 minutes to find another car that’s willing to do so.
After asking 2-3 cars, finally one of the drivers agreed to help out. About 5 minutes later we were out of the problem we were facing thanks to the nameless people that helped us out.
This also helped us save about NZD 300 if we had to call in the tow company or the rental company to come and jump-start the van.
Today, while on the way to meet up with a client (yes, Financial Planners have to work on holidays – sometimes), I realized I had to fill up the petrol as I was running low. While fueling, suddenly I heard a voice calling, Salam Bang, boleh tolong tak?
Turning around nampak seorang brader ni, ingat mula2 dia nak mintak duit. Tapi kita tanya jugak. Kenapa? Nak mintak tolong jumpstart kereta, bateri kong.
Tiba2 teringat cerita masa dekat NZ dulu, and macam rasanya struggle nak carik orang tolong. So, terus cakap boleh tolong. Tak sampai 5 minit pun dah settle, and ingatkan dia utk terus gi mechanic utk tukar bateri, sebab next time nak restart kereta mungkin akan jadi balik.
Kita pun tak tau siapa pulak brader tu akan tolong lepas ni kan. Maybe one way or another benda tu akan sampai balik dkt kita.
Moral of the story, helping others sometimes doesn’t take that much time or resources. So kalau boleh, dan ada masa, silalah tolong sesiapa yg memerlukan.