On the kindness of strangers
My ex-husband has had Parkinson’s disease for about five years, but it’s gotten considerably worse during the last two years. That’s when I started to notice a phenomenon that has increased over time: people race eagerly to help him.
And I mean race. I’ve seen little old ladies, young people, burly men, people of all shapes and sizes and ages running over to him to offer help when all he’s doing is unloading groceries from his cart or getting out of the car. For a while it puzzled him, and it even puzzled me: why did they perceive him as so very in need of assistance? He really – so far – can usually do all those sorts of things on his own.
But people notice something almost immediately. And they can see it from across a large parking lot, and it apparently telegraphs “help me, please!”. Yes, his hand shakes, and he’s stooped over and walks slowly – he, who used to be so gracefully athletic. But he’s (fortunately) still fairly independent. And yet they notice something, whatever it is.
So I’ve been impressed by how massively kind people are being. It’s really quite extraordinary.
“Kind” is pretty much the default setting for most people; it has to be trained out of them for them to not be kind.
All praise to the kind!
However, one might argue that Parkinson’s hits a sweet spot between reward and risk for Good Samaritans.
For normal people with consciences, it’s hard to watch someone really struggling to perform common tasks.
The Average American is Kind. And wants to help.
The role reversal is happening, folks now offer to help me loading 4×8 sheets of OSB sheathing into my pickup at Home Despot.
But I can and still do lend a hand.
Spitballing here,
One helps when it seems necessary. But Neo also asked about people spotting the need and only then deciding to help. How’s this?
We cannot actively, even if unconsciously, evaluate every sensation which impinges on us,. So we hae what might be called “templates”. A template is how things are supposed to look/feel/smell, so forth. If things we pass or are passing us are fit the template, we don’t notice. If something does not fit the template, our attention goes there.
Neo’s ex is not moving as the template operating in a grocery store or its parking lot would require and so, despite the vision passing over, attention is drawn and the vision returns and an evaluation results. Then the decision as to what action, if any, is required.
Couple of years ago, in a grocery store parking lot, all was in accord with the tempo. People walking, shopping carts, people with and without them. Cars parked and cars moving. Then there was a blob at about three o’clock, maybe forty yards. a blob is not in the template so my vision returned. Seemed an issue requiring attention. It was people watching a guy trying to help another guy. So, now I know. Next, I decide.
In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.
Said a young woman wise beyond her years.
Oh Mike Plaiss, that was it.
I think people want to be kind. See this:
Small Kindnesses
Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
Yas! Because I grew up in an abusive household, I am often amazed by the kindness of strangers to me.
A couple of days ago I was in a not-so-good neighborhood in upper Manhattan. I saw a Hispanic-looking teenager holding the hand of an older lady with a cane trying to navigate a patch of snowy sidewalk. I didn’t take much notice, assuming it was his grandmother. But when they got to the end of the patch and the sidewalk was clear, he turned and went the other way as she thanked him. Just a kid helping a stranger. Made my day.
The instinctive gaciousness of humans to one another is surprising and wonderful. But a group of us together loses that. Why?
Cicero, I don’t really have an answer to why a group of us together loses that graciousness, although Neo could host a round-table or two discussing options.
However, I have a rather sad story that gave me a snapshot of when and who.
Some years ago now, on a long-since-forgotten blog post or comment thread, I read a comment by a woman who gave an account of driving along the highway and seeing a van with another woman and children pulled off to the side of the road, clearly needing assistance. She started to pull over, she recounted, and then noticed that the van had a “Bush for President” sticker on it.
“So I drove on by,” she concluded, clearly expecting to receive commendation for her “principled” actions, rather than the aghast horror that I personally felt.
I don’t remember the general position of the responses, if there were any; it was the clearly self-satisfied tone with which the comment was offered IN PUBLIC that I remember.
Things have only gotten worse, I’m afraid.
I glad people in parking lots follow their instincts, and hope there aren’t a lot who look at bumper stickers first, but I’m very saddened that far too many do, and then make a political rather than truly principled choice.
TJ, I am so sorry about your childhood. Honestly, I’m in a similar boat.
It has necessitated a long learning process to adequately judge what is kindness vs scamming or “grooming” intentions.
An abusive home life can cause a lot of vulnerability to what is encountered outside of it.
Mrs Whatsit, at 7:16pm:
“Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris.
That was lovely! Thank you for sharing it.
Generally, almost by definition, a “small kindness” is a minimal effort compared to the help needed. Thus, when the thanks proffered is in proportion to the much larger, in a sense, help needed, it’s almost embarrassing,
It was interesting to note who would show kindness to me when I was wearing a brace and on crutches after a knee surgery and riding a crowded trolley where I live. Older English-speaking people of all races had a much higher likelihood of offering me a seat than younger people, who usually never gave up the chance to browse on their phones in comfort (while seated), even ones sitting in the seats designated for people with disabilities near the doors. Also, I found that Chinese people of any age (of which there are a large number in my city) would never offer me a seat, which I assumed was something cultural, but possibly prejudicial. So if I was surrounded by a bunch of seated kids and Chinese people, it was often a frail old lady who would stand up and offer me her seat, which I would decline, hoping someone else would be shamed into acting. But invariably, no one did in those cases.
nefron:
Interesting.
With my ex, it’s often somewhat older people making the offer, but it certainly sometimes is younger people too. But it’s not a situation where anyone has to give up a seat.
nefron
Been in places with lots of Chinese such as national parks. Their view of personal space is not ours.
I read once that there is (or was) a cultural norm in China that if you helped anyone avoid danger, or who had an ability problem, you had to keep helping them, even having a socially-imposed responsibility for them.
You literally could not do a “small” kindness.
Sorry I have no links.
It was in the context of a child in the street getting run over (or perhaps nearly so), where no one would step in to help.