Politeness

What would happen if everybody went out of their way to be polite? What about helpful? Everybody would be so much happier, the givers AND the receivers. It might inspire the receivers to give more, thus making a cycle of charity. What if everybody didn’t go out of their way to help others, but at least did a good deed when they saw the need of one? Society would still be a much happier, crime free place, because the people that were helped would not need to break the law or starve in order to survive. What if only a few people did good deeds and hardly any went out of their way to help others? Then nation would be a corrupt nation, in my opinion. Luckily, in this rare case, I am not talking about the United States.

I once read an article in a magazine or some other source that had done a politeness test in many cities around the globe. They tested in a few different ways. They did all of their tests outside Starbucks coffee shops, and did three tests. The one I am telling about happened in New York. The first test was to have a reporter come in with a handful of items and order a cup of coffee. Then the reporter would stumble his or her way to the door. The test was to see if a person would hold the door for them. I don’t remember the exact results, but I think that they said that 45% of the people tested held the door for the reporter. The second test was to have the reporter carrying a faulty briefcase and then have it suddenly pop open, strewing papers everywhere. This time the test was to see who would help to pick up the papers. The results were that 30% of the people would stoop to the ground to help them pick up the paper. I do not remember what the third test was, but it had a similar outcome. These were really good results, higher than the rest of the averages of other countries, aside from the fact that apparently people are more likely to help a woman than a man. There were nations above us in politeness, and below us.

I did not just write down the results of a whole experiment for nothing, I wrote them to show how good our nation does in politeness, and how much we could improve. In seminary recently, we watched a video about a man who left almost complete strangers his few meager belongings when he died. Every one of them had hardly ever met him, but through small acts of kindness they greatly influenced his life. It amazed me that I may have influenced someone out there and that they are eternally grateful to me, or hate me because of something I had done many years ago. After I thought about it for a while, I also realized that there were people who would never remember me, yet they had either helped me or hurt me without even knowing that I would remember it to this day. This has made me a little more conscious to what I do to people every day. If we were all more polite, then nobody would have to have bad memories and we may have found the one way to be truly happy, which is through charity.