This keeps happening

One little encouraging thing keeps happening from time to time.

I'm out and about as much as I possibly can, a lot more than I would be if I had no excuse for it. Often I'm either going to or from work or to or from therapy or exercise, but above all else I'm probably playing Ingress. The result is that I'm out walking, a lot. I don't go anywhere without a cane and truth is I don't walk very well or very fast even with it, but most of the time I probably don't really look like I need help.

Occasionally I overdo it for some reason. I end up not being able to walk more than 20 meters before I need to rest, and rest generally means I need to sit down. I usually only need a minute of pause but unlike some negotiable desire of a functioning person, there's really no option for me other than to just sit down and wait. I imagine at these times I probably do look a bit of in need of assistance.

Now, I don't know exactly how miserable I look to a random passersby, and frankly I can't remember or imagine what I would have said or done if had come across someone in my state, but it's quite remarkable how often when I need to just stop and rest that someone stops and asks if I'm ok.

I get offered a seat on the bus and things like that almost daily but that's a little different, it's a predictable situation in which we're taught how to behave and what to expect. It's helpful and makes me glad but it's still on some level the expected thing to do. This stopping on the street to ask if I need help is more than that.

That this keeps happening makes me think that maybe people aren't really aware how nice and helpful the average person really is.

Random people on the street, you're often better than I expect.