Or “good heart”, the name of the man who gave us directions to Lombok, the multicultural district of Utrecht. Before I can even say hello to him, he asked how he could help — and this just through eye contact. He ended up walking with us for thirty minutes. Seventy-two and retired twice — first when he was sixty and working at a water management plant in Surinam, and second when he was seventy and moved with his wife to the Netherlands (her wish, he says). Seventy-two and no cane, and with wrinkles that almost made a permanent smile. Seventy-two and yet, looked fifty-two.<\/p>\n
“Oh, I’m also learning Hindu now. I like world languages.”<\/p>\n
Sometimes I wonder if people who are named after different virtues like Patience or Faith actually live up to them, or if they’re so self-conscious about whether their actions line up with their name that they either hold themselves up to superhuman standards or give up entirely. I wouldn’t know, but it seemed like Goedhart took it in stride.<\/p>\n
The people I’ve met here in the Netherlands so far are very kind, as are many other people in the world. Being named “good heart” isn’t a requirement for being a decent human being, but it doesn’t hurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or “good heart”, the name of the man who gave us directions to Lombok, the multicultural district of Utrecht. Before I can even say hello to him, he asked how he could help — and this just through eye contact. He ended up walking with us for thirty minutes. Seventy-two and retired twice — first … Continue reading “Goedhart”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netherlands"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3MSpn-goedhart","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesleyschan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}