November 29, 2007

• Moral Tune-Ups and the Can Can

  It is not a little remarkable that sympathy with the distresses of others should excite tears more freely than our own distress; and this certainly is the case.  Many a man, from whose eyes no suffering of his own could wring a tear, has shed tears at the sufferings of a beloved friend.

    –The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

  Last week as I sat waiting in the Los Angeles airport for my flight to Portland, there was a woman behind me talking rather loudly on her cell phone.  I could not help but overhear her conversation.  Ordinarily, this would be the type of thing that would light my fuse immediately.  It was hard to get upset at this particular woman though, because of what she was talking about.  She was on the phone with someone who was clearly distressed and she was trying to calm them.  It was someone I suspect she knew very well, a family member perhaps.  In soothing tones the woman in the airport cited Bible verse after Bible verse explaining and relating in Christian terms how adhering to the word of God, would help the person on the phone with their struggles. Agree or disagree, she seemed extremely altruistic, and for that reason, it was hard to take offense.
  

  I’m not really one for Christian ideology, and the older I get the more I find myself going the way of Julia Sweeney and questioning all facets of organized religion.  But I was raised a good Catholic boy, and I still have respect for an individual’s religious beliefs no matter how unfounded.  So I endured this loud conversation and tried to read my (not Good but good) book.  After all, I was on my way to visit Marcelo, one of the most altruistic people I know.  He’s like a moral compass; a shining example of why you need not be religious or even believe in “God” to live a good life and respect the lives of others.

  This is something I need to be reminded of every once in a while.  It has nothing to do with being Christian or Muslim or Buddhist, it just has to do with altruism (the Ethic of Reciprocity) and another evolutionary concept called reciprocal altruism.  You may not know the term, but you know what it means.  Consider the elaborate dance we all do when we are out to dinner with good friends and the bill comes.  Reciprocal altruism is what makes us grab the bill and try to pay it before our friends have the chance (unlike the non altruistic approach sometimes taken when we gesture that we want to pay, but we secretly do not!).  Whenever I’m around Marcelo, he makes me want to be a better person  (WWMD).  I rethink things like this, and wonder if maybe I went a bit overboard (ya think!?) LOL.

  So how does this all relate to the lady in the airport?  Well, last night when I got on the plane from Portland to Los Angeles and settled into my aisle seat, I discovered the woman in the window seat was the same woman from the airport in L.A. a week earlier.  As a jaded business traveler, I’m not one to make a habit of exchanging trite  pleasantries with other passengers, so I settled into my book.  The young man between us in the middle seat had his iPod on very loudly, and was tapping his hands on his legs and shaking his knees, all while shaking the armrests on both sides.  This was happening before the plane even took off.  I was starting to get really annoyed, and tried to shoot him a few darting glances to express my dissatisfaction.

  The Christian lady though, tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to take out his earphones.  She then proceeded to very calmly ask him if he was OK, because his actions were really upsetting her.  She asked him if he was nervous about flying and he said he was not.  She told him that his twittering and jumpiness were quite disturbing, and he replied “Oh really?”.  At first I thought he was going to be rude to her.  But she then went on to say that if he was jumping around like that because he was truly nervous about flying, then it was OK for him to continue (!), otherwise she hoped he could sit a little more still.  He said that he was just “into the music” and she jokingly said, “Oh, then you’re just grooving”.  Since she looked somewhat like Aretha Franklin, she could pull that phrase off. 
  

  “Wow”, I thought to myself.  Never in a million years would I have thought to handle it that way.  I thought of Marcelo and of reciprocal altruism and of my initial reactions to this woman, both the week before and now.  I should also say that she was extremely overweight, which selfishly made me glad that I wasn’t in the middle seat.  (baby-steps Carey).  The story had an almost happy ending, except for the fact that the guy was still not able to completely suppress his fidgeting.  He must have been truly nervous and somewhat oblivious.  (I realized he may have been a few fries short of a Happy Meal when he took out his digital camera and reached over the woman and tried to take pictures out the window with the flash on.  He kept looking at the images and wondering why they just looked like a big flash of light.  LOL).  Luckily it was only a 2 hour flight.  I learned a lesson though, and was grateful that my moral tuneup from Marcelo helped me recognize that lesson.

  

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  Here’s one last Jib/Jab from our trip that Christine sent today.  It’s of me, Marcelo, Emily, Drew & Christine, doing the can can, because we can can can!  Moulin Rouge dancers, eat your heart out!!

  And you can tell everybody this is your song.

  It may be quite simple but now that it’s done;

  I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind,

  That I put down in words;

  How wonderful life is, while you’re in the world.

   

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