Why don't we just stop and help each other?

Sometimes I walk passing central station, both in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and I can't help noticing how everyone walks in their own imaginary bubble, avoiding all reality around them.

Some are too late to get to somewhere, so they rush through places having no time to notice their environment, some others are too busy, they have their phones on and the whole world around them is switched off, some are just too scared to notice, so they walk quickly, with a concern face on them, always looking at the ground, and a lot of them just don't care, so they walk with their headphones on avoiding eye contact and any other human distraction.

I stop and the whole movie seems to roll around me. I see people who have to go to the airport and struggle incredibly to get their big bags up the stairs while the rest pass by them pushing them, going over, avoiding them, skipping their bags for a centimeter, getting inpatient, moving their heads in disapproval, but no one helping. I see the starving man who looks with his watery sad eyes inside the garbage can, and the guy who comes and throws half of his hamburger in the trash bin, rather than giving it to the man in his hands... I'm afraid he didn't even noticed the man. I see the musicians endlessly playing their melodies in the harsh winter while everyone walks by trying not to see or listening to their own tunes. I wonder if they ever thought about the man standing always in that sharp cold.

And then I wonder, why can't we just give a hand to someone else, given that all humans have such an amazing capacity for compassion. How can we see the faces of pain, hunger, anger and fear scattered through that world of strangers around us, and fail to notice it? We are all prepared to help, why don't we then?

Why do we rather absolve into ourselves to not notice others? Have everyone forgotten the strange complacency that one feels when helping others? We are indeed naturally altruistic and prepared to enjoy altruistic actions. Is that we have lost our compassion or is that we are just so overwhelmed with everything else that we can't pay attention to life and to the world anymore? I wonder if we will ever start noticing, if we will ever stop focusing on ourselves and start seeing others, if we will ever again pay full attention to the world, if we will ever gain back our emotional empathy and take the opportunity to help others... if we will ever just have time for it.