The Invisible People
In the season of giving thanks and counting one’s blessing, my grateful heart goes out to the invisible people. We don’t always see them. Sometimes they are hidden from sight as they work hours when the rest of us are slumbering. They keep our spaces livable! Maybe we do not notice their presence, but we would notice their absence. Our quality of life depends on them.
I have taken early morning walks on pavements swept clean by people who got up even earlier than me. I have eaten from countless cleaned dishes and drank from sparklingly polished glasses without ever knowing who was working away in the kitchen. I have slept on clean sheets in places that have no washing machines. The invisible people give me a sense of humility. My travels would be impossible if there were no hygienic toilets in airports and bus stations. But I have rarely seen their faces nor known their names.
During my childhood, every German kid knew the famous fairy tale of the Heinzelmännchen of Cologne. They were shy spirits who came out at night to keep everything in order. The town’s people would awake to clean houses, washed laundry and freshly baked bread. According to the tale, this lasted until the tailor’s wife tricked and humiliated them. They never returned to Cologne.
So, before the invisible people give up on us, maybe we should find ways to honor them rather than letting them toil in unappreciated obscurity. There are monuments to famous rulers, politicians, generals, writers and musicians. Even the unknown soldier has a monument in many capitals of the world. But where are the monuments to the invisible people? Without them, Napoleon would have developed trench foot in dirty stockings and mud-covered boots and Churchill would have coughed his lungs out in rooms covered in cold cigar ash. The collective contribution of the invisible people has done more to keep the world going than our proclaimed heroes!
Even the Heinzelmännchen have their own monument in Cologne, a fountain erected in the age of romanticism.
