SLOVENIA'S 5 CORE VALUES

As I was getting out of the car, I remembered I didn't have my umbrella with me. Upon looking at the sky, it had struck me that it might start raining soon. »Oh no, it'll be fine,« I told myself and hurried on. 

I still had quite a few minutes» walk to the rendezvous point. When I was only a few hundred metres from my destination and standing at a red traffic light, it suddenly started to pour with rain. «Oh no, not right now!" I said aloud. A few minutes later, I noticed a woman standing beside me, looking at me from under her umbrella. 

At first I thought she was looking at me strangely, but her words surprised me: »You can step under my umbrella for a moment so you don't get completely soaked.« I didn't need to be told twice and she walked me to the building where I was meeting someone. Then our paths parted and I thanked her for her warm gesture. 

The meeting went well and in the meantime I forgot about the storm raging outside. After the meeting ended I found myself outside again and the thought struck me once more that I was without an umbrella. I was in a rush to move on, so I had no choice but to pull my long coat over my head, which sort of kept my head and partly my upper body dry. 

I wandered the streets like a little ghost, feeling like a ridiculous sight to myself, when suddenly a man came out of the Mercator store with his lunch in one hand and an umbrella in the other. 

We walked almost side by side for a few seconds, then he said: »Come under my umbrella. We can go together at least as far as the company where I work.« 

»That is really kind of you,« I was surprised, having received a nice gesture for the second time that day. And that even in a city where they say everyone keeps to themselves.

»Helping someone who finds themselves without an umbrella in the middle of a downpour while you have one yourself is surely completely human,« he said to me. 

When we arrived at the building where the man works, he offered to lend me his umbrella to get to where I parked my car, and then I was supposed to return it to him. »Fortunately, my car is quite close, so that's not necessary,« I replied, thanked him and wished him a nice day. 

The gentleman certainly brightened it up for me, as did the lady I met earlier at the traffic lights. These are two people who didn't look away that day, but instead invited me under their umbrella and accompanied me so that I wasn't completely soaked. 

Your actions filled me with the pleasant feeling that there are still good people who do not turn away when they see someone has met with misfortune. Good deeds too rarely find themselves on the front pages of the media and on social networks, which is why we can easily get caught up in negativity. Yet the world is not so black, as it is possible to meet many good people in real life and along everyday paths. 

Mateja Sekavčnik, 31 July 2026