I remember the sinking feeling when a former colleague spotted me on the home station and decided to sit next to me for the whole of the two and a half hour journey. He had retired about 5 years previously and although I had worked closely with him in a professional capacity, to be honest, I had never really liked him and had never managed to get beyond what I found to be his repulsive bonhomie.
Within a few minutes of conversation I began to see an entirely different person. He was a broken and vulnerable human being. He had prostate cancer in the latter stages and was making a final journey to
his elderly sister to say goodbye.
For the first time ever I was able to engage with the human being. We spoke at length about the agony he was feeling as he faced goodbyes to his wife and family. There were comfortable silences of understanding.
When we parted we knew it was final. He died about six months later.
I felt glad that we had that final journey and guilty that I had never really tried to get to know the man before.
I don’t see why you would feel guilty. From the sound of it, the man was unpleasant and fit to be avoided when you knew him before. Now that he was terminally ill, this brought out a different side of his character, one that you could engage with. You did so and that’s all anyone can ask.
Even perfectly nice people sometimes don’t get on and in such cases the sensible thing is for them to avoid one another. Why not? The world is full of people to interact with…
We are not obliged to tolerate, let alone be nice to, unpleasant people. I got into conversation with a man on the train the other day then changed seats rather than listen to his homophobic patter. Life’s too short and we have a duty to ourselves as much as to others.
Your colleague was in fact lucky that you were prepared to overcome your justly learned antipathy towards him. What you did for him was not a duty but a gift.
It would be arrogant, not charitable, to think we can and must be nice to everybody as it assumes a degree of humanity and talent that most of us do not possess.