This I Believe

I believe that people are inherently good and I’ll tell you why.

Years ago I lost a pair of prescription glasses in a deep lake on a cross-country camping trip. I reported the loss to the lifeguard, and spent the next months saving up for a new pair while squinting through scratched, out-of-date lenses. Then one day I got a call from a man I didn’t know who lived nearby. He said that he’d been a guest at the camp grounds, and asked if I’d I like to come and pick up my glasses. It turns out that a scuba diving club had fished them out of the lake and, to spare postage, the thrifty lifeguard, had given them to the man on the phone to bring them back to me.

A few years later at another campsite, I left a leather handbag containing a gold bracelet, a gift from my grandfather, lying on a picnic bench. Just before we decamped, two cyclists pulled up hungry and exhausted. We fed them, chatted, and took off. I was sure I would never see bag and bracelet again, but a few months later, we received both of them in the mail. The cyclists had traveled thousands of miles with my possessions strapped to their bikes, and then mailed them to the address they could barely make out on the inside flap. I still love looking at the weathered leather.

Recently, I lost the little monthly planner that tells me where to be, when and why, and without which I am totally lost. The conference hotel where it went missing was so vast that I could never have retraced my steps, so I returned home bereft, at loose ends, and vaguely fearful of identity theft. A few weeks later, it appeared in the mail with a short note: “Thought you might like to have this back.”

My latest recovery again involved glasses. This time I dropped them on a walk at the edge of town. Not very hopeful, I filed a report at city hall. I also took out an ad in the paper, but before it appeared, I got a voice-mail message asking if I’d I like to come to city hall and pick up my glasses. This time, I was able to phone the finder. Eager to make contact with an agent of miraculous recovery at last, I was astonished to find out how casually she took it. She wouldn’t hear of a reward or even of letting me take her out to lunch.

Either I am unbelievably lucky or people are basically good, and I believe it is the latter. How else to explain individuals who perform selfless acts just because it is the right thing to do? The world may be going to hell down there in the realm of power-brokers, but up here on earth where people practice scuba-diving, ride bikes, and go for walks, things are pretty good. And I’ll bet that’s true everywhere.