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Beneath 9/11′s terrible smoke, a flash of gold
By Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Today at 4:55 a.m. EDT
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A Time of Gifts
By Stephen Jay Gould
Sept. 26, 2001
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By Sally Jenkins
Columnist
Today at 4:55 a.m. EDT
.
It was true. On every block, store owners and restaurant workers would offer you something, a bit of free solace — “Are you thirsty? Do you need something to eat?” — and refuse payment. Because it was not that kind of day.
“We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior,” Gould wrote.
So I honor the man in the bike shop who provided free-handedly a yellow Schwinn with creeeeeing brakes, gave respite to a footsore witness of the worst day ever and helped her get from the malevolent smoke into the clearer air.
“We have a duty, almost a holy responsibility, to record and honor the victorious weight of these innumerable little kindnesses, when an unprecedented act of evil so threatens to distort our perception of ordinary human behavior,” Gould wrote.
So I honor the man in the bike shop who provided free-handedly a yellow Schwinn with creeeeeing brakes, gave respite to a footsore witness of the worst day ever and helped her get from the malevolent smoke into the clearer air.
A Time of Gifts
By Stephen Jay Gould
Sept. 26, 2001
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The patterns of human history mix decency and depravity in equal measure. We often assume, therefore, that such a fine balance of results must emerge from societies made of decent and depraved people in equal numbers. But we need to expose and celebrate the fallacy of this conclusion so that, in this moment of crisis, we may reaffirm an essential truth too easily forgotten, and regain some crucial comfort too readily forgone. Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ''ordinary'' efforts of a vast majority.
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Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned something important that I should never have forgotten -- and the joke turned on me. Those 12 apple brown bettys went like literal hot cakes. These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and soul, from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he inserted one of our shoe pads. And he said, with a twinkle and a smile restored to his face: ''Thank you. This is the most lovely thing I've seen in four days -- and still warm!''
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Twelve apple brown bettys into the breach. Twelve apple brown bettys for thousands of workers. And then I learned something important that I should never have forgotten -- and the joke turned on me. Those 12 apple brown bettys went like literal hot cakes. These trivial symbols in my initial judgment turned into little drops of gold within a rainstorm of similar offerings for the stomach and soul, from children's postcards to cheers by the roadside. We gave the last one to a firefighter, an older man in a young crowd, sitting alone in utter exhaustion as he inserted one of our shoe pads. And he said, with a twinkle and a smile restored to his face: ''Thank you. This is the most lovely thing I've seen in four days -- and still warm!''
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