The many flavors of favors

I had started my column for this week on politics and was trying to figure out how to use a U.S. Court of Appeals opinion.  As I tried to find a good summary of the case, there was a knock on our front door.

It was one of the students next door.  Her boyfriend’s car wouldn’t start.  She wondered if I could pull my car around and help; they had cables.  I replied that I had a jump starter and we could use that instead.

I put on my coat and boots and went to our garage.  I pulled the starter out of the back of my SUV and checked it.  The green light didn’t come on, but three red bars were showing.  I’ll give it a try anyway.

He said he had “one of those” but it wasn’t charged.  We hooked up my charger, and he tried the ignition.  Whir! Whir! Whir! but no start.  He said that was better than before.  I said I would plug my charger in and come back if his didn’t get charged first.

Back to the political article.  Steps on front porch.  My neighbor was back.  She said they were going to Chester Creek Café.  I said, “Let’s give a try with my car.  I forgot all about using it.”

But first I checked the charger and it did show the green bar intermittently.  We hooked it up to boyfriend’s car again. Whir! Whir! Whir! but no start.  He said that was better than before.  I apologized for not bringing my car next to his.

I did that and we hooked up his jumper cables.  Even though the negative sparked on contact, his car didn’t start.  He suggested using a point at the end of the ground cables from the battery. Whir! Whir! Whir! but no start.  He said that was better than before.

Oh!  I forgot to gun my engine as he tried to start his.  I gunned it.  He tried to start his.  Thumbs up!

They thanked me profusely.  I said,  “Pass the favor on.  I know you will many times.”

Oh!  How many times have people done favors for me without any expectation of reward?  Their only motivations were either politeness when there was no real inconvenience and trying to help someone in need even if it was inconvenient to them.

How often do people hold the elevator door or open a door for others?

Last winter I wrote about a father and son pulling us out of the ditch.

How many times do neighbors do more shoveling or snow-blowing than just their own portion?

I’ve lost track of times I’ve left my lock or a piece of clothing behind at the fitness center, and somebody has turned it in to the front desk

My wife left her wallet at a bus stop and didn’t realize it until the bus pulled away.  We got off at the next stop and ran back.  Her wallet was gone!  She reported it to the transit authority, but they had no record of it being turned in.  She called the fitness center.  No wallet.

She called to cancel her credit cards and was considering applying for another driver’s license.  Two days later, a small package was in the mail.  It was her wallet with all of its contents.  The woman who found it had decided that returning that way was better than turning it over to a bus driver.  My wife sent a thank you note to the finder and a bit more money than the postage.

How many times have we left hats or gloves at various places?  When we return, the left items are in an obvious place or behind the counter.

When I visited Prague I had taken a long walk taking many pictures.  At one point I realized I didn’t have my lens cap.  I retraced my steps and found it on one of the concrete posts of the bridge I had been on.  I could have set it down there myself, but I don’t think so.  I believe somebody found it on the sidewalk and put it in a more obvious place for the owner to find.

Sometimes we have mixed emotions about the favors people do for us.  I had skidded my car into the gully of a freeway medium.  There was no way I was going to get it out by myself.  I started to walk to a nearby hotel, but two guys offered to take me to a garage farther away.

They were smoking, playing loud music, didn’t give me a chance to put my seat belt on, and went over the speed limit.  I wondered if I would even be dropped at that garage.  They did drop me off and asked for nothing in return.  Within an hour my car was out of the median strip and I was on my way home.

I think this all may be indirect payback for the time, decades ago, that I stopped one night to help four teen-agers who had some car trouble.  I don’t remember if it was a flat tire or something else.  I don’t even remember if I did more than provide some light to change a tire by.  I do think they were on their way again before I went my way.

Whether you help someone or are helped, most likely the roles will be reversed another time.

Mel wonders where he would be if others hadn’t helped him in big or little ways.

God, civility, and the Golden Rule

Some letter writers to the Duluth News Tribune have recently been calling for God in our lives to solve many of our problems.  Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisitor, believed in God, and he had thousands murdered because they didn’t believe as he did.  The Puritans believed in God, and they had dozens murdered because the innocent victims would not admit to being witches.  Plantation owners believed in God, and they kept slaves who they would whip for whatever cause.

The problem with a belief in God is that too many “believers” are very selective in what they believe.  Too many ignore a central tenet of monotheistic and other religions.

“Do not unto your neighbor what you would not have him do unto you; this is the whole Law; the rest is commentary.” – Hillel, a Jewish teacher in the first century, B.C.E.

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” – Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:12

“...and you should forgive and overlook: Do you not like God to forgive you? And Allah is The Merciful Forgiving.” _ Qur’an (Surah 24, “The Light”, v. 22)

"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others." – Confucius

“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him." – Plato’s Socrates (Crito, 49c)

You can find many more variations and sources of the “Golden Rule” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule.

What these religious and ethical variations call for is for us to be part of communities.  These communities are at neighborhood, city, national, and world levels.  They are as informal as holding a door for a stranger at a public building or as formal as churches and civic associations.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t act as if we are in some of these communities.  We walk out of our houses to our car on the street or in the garage and drive somewhere else without even seeing a neighbor.  We don’t bother to shovel our sidewalks because we don’t use them, completely ignoring all the footprints in the snow.  As we drive we are focused on thoughts elsewhere, whether in our heads, on our radios, or even on our cell phones.  We drive over crosswalks without even looking for pedestrians.  We drive through red lights ignoring any traffic or pedestrians waiting at the cross streets.  We race through parking garages without headlights and without watching for vehicles backing out.

Our first try at building communities should be to consider doing unto others what we appreciate others doing unto us.  Do we want to walk on clear sidewalks?  Do we want other drivers to be attentive to vehicles around them?  Do we want drivers to be attentive to us as we cross a street?  Do we want other drivers to wait for us to back out of a blind spot?

If we start with these small changes, maybe we can look at how we treat others in a larger context.  Do we talk about public employees as “they” or do we consider them our neighbors.  Did “they” make a patch on our street, or did a city crew make the patch?  Did “they” plow our street, or did an overworked city plow driver make our street more drivable?

Remember that the Good Samaritan of the Book of Luke was an “other”.  To build communities, we need to be open to including the “other” as our neighbors.