Has kindness become institutionalized in the West? Do people perform acts that originated in the Christian era for reasons they know not? Today, in a supermarket, I asked a woman with a clipboard where I could find Jones Liverwurst. I had looked in the meat displays and couldn’t find it. She walked down the meat aisle and couldn’t find it either. She suggested I order it at the deli counter.
While I was at the deli counter she came up to me with another brand. I thanked her and went on my way to buy the yogurt my wife wanted. Now this woman had a clipboard, and all she had to do to satisfy her employer, Stop n’ Shop, was fill out that clipboard. But she searched me out again at the dairy counter (now this is a large store) to hand me two packets of Jones Liverwurst.
She didn’t tell me why she did it, but I have an idea that the origin of her kindness goes back 2,000 years to a hill in Israel.
Civilization 