After helping a blind man across the road, we remain slightly undecided.

I recently helped a blind woman across the road and was struck by how accurate Gómez de la Serna’s observation is. I was walking back home from the local shops when I saw an elderly blind woman picking her way along the pavement. Construction was going on up and down the street so the woman with her white stick was constantly coming up against barriers and piles of bricks. I caught up with her and offered to lead her through the construction zone and across the street. She gratefully accepted, took my hand and we set off slowly towards the corner.

Helping a blind person has to be one of the most intimate casual encounters you can have with a complete stranger in the street. If you think about a typical day, how many times do you actually touch a stranger? Very rarely, if at all. The only experience that comes close is exchanging money in a shop. Then your hand may brush the hand of the person behind the counter, but observe how careful you both are to make sure that your fingers do not touch. Admitting a stranger into your personal space, allowing him or her to touch your skin, is not undertaken lightly.

This is why helping a blind person across the street is so intimate, and part of the reason it leaves you undecided. I held the lady’s hand and we made very slow progress up the street. Her hand was very soft and wrinkled and slightly cold. There we were, it would be some time before we reached the corner, so I thought I should start a conversation. So for the remainder of our journey we made small talk—about the neighborhood, about how there always seemed to be construction going on—and I periodically gave her updates about where we were and how far we had to go the corner. Finally, we crossed the street and I pointed the lady in the direction she wanted to go and we said goodbye. I resumed my walk home.

I didn’t get but a few meters down the street, when I stopped and turned back to look at the lady. Had I taken her far enough? Would she make the rest of her trip alright? Should I have asked if there was anything else she needed? I was undecided. Just those few moments we walked together had created a kind of intimacy, a camaraderie, and I was now unsure if I had done enough for her.

Gómez de la Serna wrote thousands and thousands of greguerías. Each of his aphorisms is both profound and comical; no event is so trivial that it does not contain some kernel of humor or wisdom or an unexpected insight:

Ants rush about as though the shops were just closing.

The giraffe is a horse elongated by curiosity.

How quickly they pack suitcases in films!

Now, reading Gómez de la Serna always leaves me slightly undecided. Am I really seeing what’s going on around me? Do I need to add a little more metaphor and humor to my life? Am I making the most of all the hubbub?