Personal essays
Once again working on a world that does good things
The dog
On my way back from grocery shopping Sunday - no meat and eggs were on manager’s special for 99 cents/dozen and still the bill was over $100. Weren’t people mad about the price of groceries during the last administration.
You can’t let me interrupt myself like that; I’ll never finish.
I turned onto my street and there was a large white car stopped about halfway down the block with the driver side door open.
I signalled left to turn into my driveway and a woman got out of the car holding a dog and waved at me.
I stopped, rolled my window down - well, we don’t roll windows down any more. I pressed the button and the window went down.
She was saying something that I didn’t hear so I stopped the engine and stepped out of my car.
“Do you know whose dog this is?” she asked.
I told her I thought I did and started towards a neighbor’s house when two people came out looking for the dog and were relieved to be reunited with it.
We each walked back to our cars and waved at each other.
I wondered if I would have stopped if I’d seen a dog walking around on a street I didn’t live on and go to that effort to reunite it with its owner.
The driveway
I should have told you that Sunday it was 15 degrees F / -9.5 degrees C with over a foot of snow on the ground.
This woman was well dressed, in a nice coat, holding a dog that wasn’t hers.
I turned into my driveway and tapped the garage door opener.
I should have told you that I’d been gone for two weeks. I was in Singapore for a week and then LA for a week.
The foot of snow had fallen in Cleveland a week earlier as I spent the weekend in Anaheim.
“Hmmm,” I thought, “I don’t get home for a week. I hope the snow melts by then.”
Nope. The temperatures stayed well below freezing for that week and are likely to stay there this week and part of next.
I flew home this past Saturday.
Before boarding the plane I checked the light rail schedule and saw that because of the cold, some of the rail service was replaced by buses.
I texted Gary. He runs a car hire. “Sorry,” he texted back, “I can’t help you this time.”
I installed the Uber app in my phone and set a price limit. If it’s more than this I’ll take the bus and Rapid.
It wasn’t. The price was $33 and came with a $12 discount so for a little over $20 I rode home in the comfort of Emanuel’s car.
“You won’t be able to pull in the driveway,” I said. “I’ve been gone since it snowed - I’ll be shoveling all day tomorrow.”
When we pulled up in front of my house, my driveway was cleared. Someone had also cleared a path to my front door from the driveway.
I can’t say that I would have done this for a neighbor.
Good things
It’s probably more accurate to say, with the dog and the driveway, I don’t know that it would have occurred to me to do this for a neighbor.
I love doing things for other people.
Part of it is I appreciate how much other people do for me.
I was on a bus in LA last week and it turned left when it should have gone straight and it pulled over and everyone got out.
I was confused. The driver stood up and came back to tell me, “sorry friend but this is as far as I go. This bus is out of service.”
I clearly looked confused so he pointed across the street and told me where to pick up the bus that went the rest of the way.
It wasn’t just him.
My brother and I had gotten on the bus headed the other way. We each had money and contactless credit cards but only I had the special TAP card they want you to use on buses.
“Should I tap twice,” I asked.
“Just once,” he answered, “both of you can ride.”
Before you think I’ve gone all soft on you, let me say that I know there are jerks in this world. The news is filled with stories of people doing awful things.
But mostly there are good people doing good things. And there are good people who would do more good things if it occurred to them. The way we help these things occur to them is we do good things for them.
I learned a new word this week on the Scriptnotes podcast. One of the hosts read from a piece by Kevin Kelly that contained the word “pronoia”.
It’s the opposite of paranoia. With pronoia you have a feeling that other people are out to help you.
That’s the world I want to encourage and live in.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 306. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe