Pisanthrophobia.

 For those who were struggling, I took the title from an obscure facts generator I follow on twitter, which informed me that "Pisanthrophobia" is the fear of other people due to bad experiences.
 I guess we all get it, to a degree.
 It also, coincidentally, contains the phrase "piss ant", at least as closely as makes no difference, and that's a phrase that crops up often in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," which might well be my favourite book.
 I bring all of this up because I was reading an online diary by someone whose mother died slowly in hospital, and he mentioned that, amongst the Intensive Care Unit staff, his mother didn't have any strangers; she'd come to know them all well. It made me think about basic humanity - that in the face of her own death, this woman was taking a polite interest in others - and so, for probably the first, and almost certainly the only, time on this blog, here's a very personal story about me.

 A few years ago, late at night and half-cut, I was temporarily separated from my girlfriend.
 I'd been separated from her for a while at the time and in all stages of sobriety, in fairness, but this story takes place late one night when I'm half drunk, and we'd not long split up, and to the eternal detriment of my dignity I was screaming things down the phone to her. Angry, mean things - mostly about the guy she unsuccessfully tried to leave me for, but ugly things nonetheless - and when either she rang off or I ran out of steam, I was left alone, and spent.
 In a doorway, behind me, was a homeless guy, and he asked me if I was alright.
 Honestly, I wasn't. I was a mess, emotionally and probably physically. But he asked, and I ended up sitting down next to him and pouring my heart out to this poor man who had nowhere to live. Every few sentences I'd pause and apologise - profusely, earnestly - to someone who was clearly worse off than I was, for even daring to complain to him about my problems, which were, in comparison to his, negligible.
 At the end of it all, he just offered me a hug.
 I accepted, too.
 It still bothers me that I had nothing to offer him in return. It probably meant nothing to him; the next time I saw him he was drunk and didn't remember me.

 I guess basically, people can always surprise you. I nearly threw a guy out of the bar I work in tonight because he was obviously a crazy bum, and as it turns out, I was right. Would have saved a lot of people time and hassle if I'd gone with my gut and told him to fuck off right from the start.
 But every so often, people surprise you.
 Dying old ladies in ICU want to know about your life. Homeless drunks will listen to your relationship problems and offer you a hug.
 People are amazing, and we all have it in us to be bigger than we are.
 No matter how hard your day has been, we can all find the grace to be nice to each other. Sure, sometimes a crazy guy in a bar is just a crazy guy in a bar, sometimes a homeless guy is just a slouched drunk in a corner, and sometimes a person in intensive care is just a human clock, winding down.
 But let's not give up on each other just yet.
 Sometimes, we can all surprise each other. Maybe we shouldn't wait until we're at our lowest to do it.