So, I have another job interview next week. Another organisation to deep dive in a few days, so I don’t go to pieces in the moment.

(Spoiler: I will go to pieces, I hate interviews. They are an ND nightmare.)

The difference is, I understand this organisation, this role. And, amazingly, they have a robust marketing department already (Unlike most roles advertised at present, that want you to be twenty people for a smidge above minimum wage.)

(Ooh I could write posts upon posts just from these parentheses.)

Anyway, dragging it back to the point…

As I have been researching the charity, and learning where medical emergency response sits on a donor’s emotional spectrum, my AI threw up this line:

Humans are wired to value help given with no expectation of return.

This made me pause. Are we? Are we? Then it said humans are driven by the idea that:

Someone I will never meet helped someone they didn’t know.

And then it made sense. In times of trouble, when it all feels overwhelming, the advice is to look for the helpers.

We love reels of ordinary people rescuing dogs from frozen lakes, catching babies from balconies, talking down a suicidal stranger. We honour the person who challenges the knife-wielder or who shields someone they don’t know, at risk to themselves.

We want to be that person, or to know that – when it matters most – someone like that will come to our aid. And the chances are they will.

We allow our politicians to talk of an island of strangers, to worry us about immigration or people on benefits or just people who are different. We allow our journalists to foster hate because it sells newspapers.

But when faced with immediate need, I believe the majority of us would help. And if we were in need, we would hope that someone would come. And I doubt we’d care too much if the person who saved our dog, our child, ourselves looked like us or not.

And if we really are becoming an island of strangers, I believe it’s because the infrastructure of society is being eroded: high streets lost to supermarkets, schools breaking trust with parents, doctor visits becoming sought-after transactional moments, till staff replaced by machines. We can’t value our neighbours if we never actually speak to them.

We learned to isolate during Covid, now we need to be taught how to mingle again. To form connections, to talk to strangers and realise they’re just like us.

Incidentally, if you want to see this most eloquently presented by Ian McKellen, in the words of Shakespeare, Watch this Video

In a world being damaged by exploitation and excessive profit and divisive language, I truly hope we still value ‘help given with no expectation of return.’