The Kindness of Strangers

I’m a retired high school science teacher, and I was lucky enough to spend the last third of my career teaching environmental science. One topic I enjoyed sharing with students was the symbiotic relationships found between animals in nature. Textbooks describe six types: parasitism, predation, commensalism, competition, neutralism, and mutualism. Absent among them is a distinctly human capacity — altruism, often called the kindness of strangers.

In these fractious times, it may seem odd to focus on selflessness, as the news feeds us a steady diet of its complete opposite. Still, I’ve begun a small study of altruism, reading about its evolutionary roots and trying to understand the advantages of caring for strangers versus tending only to one’s own needs and those of kin. Altruism seems like a drastic departure from “survival of the fittest,” and the very fact that we can still find threads of compassion woven through the many disasters befalling the planet feels almost counterintuitive.

I’ve experienced more than a few instances of strangers coming to my rescue. Once, when I contracted Bell’s palsy and couldn’t afford medical care, two women I’d never met approached my roommate and handed her money to help pay for treatment. Another time, more recently, I accidentally dropped a rather large sum of money in a gift shop. The owner noticed and retrieved it. Not knowing if she’d see me again, she placed it in a bag. By chance, I walked past the shop once more, and out she came with the bag of cash I hadn’t even realized I’d lost.

I have a theory—more of a hope, really—that as the ravages of climate change, authoritarianism, and war continue to rain down upon us, altruism may blossom. Perhaps it will take the form of “enlightened self-interest,” as we realize that interdependence is more than just a fancy word used by religious scholars, biologists, and social scientists.

Tennessee Williams’ character Blanche DuBois was a pitiful, unsavory soul in A Streetcar Named Desire. Yet I think we’re on the brink of depending upon, and learning to become, those strangers whose kindness may save us in the end. At the very least, it’s an idea I hope catches fire and burns in the hearts of more of us as we navigate an ever-changing world.

~ Julie Snider