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September 22, 2006
mailbag part deux
All right, now we're talking. It turns out there's nothing as motivating as my comparing y'all unfavorably to myself. Here, at last, are a few examples of unselfish kindness.
I observed a manager taking responsibility for her report's screw-ups, for no reason other than to deflect blame from the report at promotion time. Yes, for this and all instances, some will assume the worst and say "She's just trying to get into heaven," or whatever cynical motive they reflexively ascribe to people. (Perhaps in order to excuse their own selfishness?) Given this manager's sheepish humility, I believe in the purity of motive. She simply chose to be inconvenienced so that someone else wouldn't be clobbered.
A woman's car was hit, and the fellow left a note. Perhaps he was afraid of being caught, perhaps not. But the woman is moving mountains not to involve his insurance company, to protect this stranger, and there's nothing whatsoever in that grief for her.
A man chose to buy the more expensive of two like items, so that a less well-off person could buy the cheaper item.
A reader writes at length of the way her freshly widowed mother put her own needs aside in order to attend to everyone else's. "My mom had things she needed to do, preparations to be made, not to mention her own grief to deal with. But she spent the whole day of her husband's death taking care of everyone else who loved him."
A disabled woman took in her adult niece, babysitting the niece's two small children and supporting them, because the niece's own parents are too selfish to help.
A man replanted his elderly neighbor's gardens after teenage punks tore them to shreds for kicks.
A different breed of teenager used his grass-cutting monies to travel from Indiana to New Orleans and help dig it out.
Dorkass watched what Frank Frank wanted to watch on TV.*
See? This isn't so hard.
*I might have made this up.
posted by john at 10:19 AM • permalink