Once again, I’m asking you to share moments of kindness you’ve experienced. I’ll start by sharing a few recent incidents that occurred during a recent trip to go teach for a few days in Morocco.
There are no direct flights from Boston to Casablanca, so a change was required on the trip over at JFK Airport in New York. The flight from Boston was on schedule, but the connecting flight from JFK was delayed several hours.
After repeated delays, the airline offered food vouchers of a modest amount to passengers waiting for the flight that could be used at any of the restaurants or stands selling snacks in the airport. People collected their vouchers and some went off searching for food. There was one family with three small children in tow among the passengers. The children were well-behaved but clearly were growing restless. Without hesitation several passengers offered the family their vouchers so they could go sit for a meal before the flight.
Later, as my phone was nearly depleted of its charge, I found a charging station where many passengers, including me, lined up their devices to be plugged in. As I sat waiting, a young man walked up, plugged in his phone and sat next to me. We got to talking and I discovered that he had just graduated college in New Zealand and was flying home after a week with his father in New York City where neither of them had ever been. The morning of their departure, the father and son had a bit of a tiff and while the son went off to the airport, the father told him he’d meet him later.
The son was growing nervous because his departure time was getting closer and he saw no sign of his father. After his phone had charged, he showed me a couple of photos of him and his dad on their trip, and then he went off in search of him in the airport.
A few minutes later, I saw a man who looked like his father, approached him, and told him his son was looking for him. He looked befuddled at first and then went off in search of his son. Because the airport was crowded, they apparently kept passing each other. Eventually, I saw the son, asked him to wait where I was and then went off to find where I had just seen his father go. Finally, they were reunited.
Later in Rabat, after deciding to take the local bus into town, I hadn’t realized I would need to transfer midway. Being deposited in a small village and not speaking Arabic, I had no idea how to ask about getting on the right bus. A woman who must have seen me searching around for clues, came up to me, asked, “Rabat?” and then held up fingers to represent the number of the bus I needed to get on.
In each case, someone, including me, tried to do the right thing by showing kindness to someone else in need.
Now, it’s time for you to share some acts of kindness you’ve experienced. Tell me who and where you are and email your stories to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. I will try to share some of your stories in the weeks ahead.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin
(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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