One of the few pleasures left in business travel these days is the chance to meet interesting people who are very different from those I typically encounter at home. One my last trip, waiting for a connection, I was buying a cup of specialty coffee an airport stand from a friendly man with a lovely African accent. “How much?” I asked.
“All of it,” he said, smiling, as he glanced at the travel funds in my wallet.
“Can’t do that, ” I joshed. “It all belongs to my wife.”
And suddenly this stranger who I was never going to see again was pouring out his life story, choking up with emotion in the process.
His wife had divorced him and moved back to her home in Sweden shortly after the birth of their second child. According to him, it had become clear shortly after the marriage that his wife was only interested in two things: his money, and having children. “As soon as we had the second daughter, she didn’t need me any more,” he said. Apparently he had been badly treated in the final divorce settlement, and his wife worked hard to keep the children away from him. The whole family had come to the U.S. to start a new life; now he was here alone, his wife having taken the children with her. His small business had gone belly up months ago.
“I pay $1000 a month in child support, and I’m never late,” he told me. “That’s why I work here 17 hours a day. And I’m probably never going to see my daughters again.”
I looked at him; he was actually crying. We were alone, late at night, in a nearly empty airport. “I’m so sorry,” I said, and shook his hand. “You should be proud that you’re doing the right thing, and fulfilling your obligations as a father. You’re a good man, and I admire you. Don’t despair; sometimes these things work out.”
And I gave him a lousy two dollar tip for a cup of coffee costing $1.89.
As I walked away, it didn’t seem like I had done enough. All over America, indeed, all over the world, ordinary people struggle with personal crisis and tragedy. It is important that we care, and that we all try to give each other some support and encouragement. I did the best I could, I guess. Certainly I had no obligation to do more.
Why do I feel so guilty?
Ethics Alarms 
Extract from my book Inactivity Based Cost Management:
Quote:When we stand on the equator and look at North Pole and South Pole they are so far apart. But it is no different from a small coin having two sides head and tail, when North and South Poles are watched from the moon. Poles apart, true but Earth is a single indivisible unit. Genghis Khan and Gandhi are in the same plane but with different values. Both belong to a same specie. It is like identifying left hand and right hand but they are part of the single inseparable unit. That’s the truth. Truth always and completely involves opposite values, and then only it can be truth.
Opposite value of eating is not hunger but fasting. The option is made available to the individual concerned either to eat or give it up on a special occasion. To the individual it is the same effort, eating or fasting, with the values being different. Whereas if one considers deeply the opposite value of hunger one would find, it is not eating but morality, the contrast between a boxing day and the other days. In the first instance to forgo the eating on special occasion is a personal choice whereas seeing the hungry man but not feeding him is the choice of the society one lives in. A humane society is the one that does not allow a man to go hungry, whereas in the society one lives to-day, the responsibility is left to the individual and not taken up by the state. Opposite values of hunger and morality do exist and will exist, so long a humane society or a government for the people is not formed. A hungry man knows no taste or discrimination but a man with no morality knows no fear or shame. Unquote:
Governance = Resolving Paradox http://wp.me/p18MVb-3G
You do not have to feel guilty, as we are yet to create a Humane Society as well Government for the People but certainly you shall feel proud of what you feel you are – Morality. Boxing day can be every day with a small token that one otherwise spends for a single cigarette.
Is it guilt or just a deep sense of empathy for a man that obviously works hard, supports his children and yet is denied seeing them grow up?
Not exactly related, but once, while my brother and I were in Boston, a man stopped us and asked if we had any money we could give him. He was broke and stranded with his wife, but didn’t have enough gas to get all the way home. He just got out of the hospital (he showed me the stitches in his head). He stopped us because we ‘looked like nice upstanding fellas’ or something like that.
My brother got 40 bucks out of his bank account and gave it to him. We didn’t bother asking for anyway to get paid back (but we also weren’t completely sure it wasn’t a scam, so this way he had no personal info on us other than our first names and that we’re identical twins). He leaves and my brother and I go home.
To this day, we don’t know if we did the right thing or are just suckers.
In a different vein, I remember once there was someone who didn’t have enough for the bus. ($1.50, at the time) He was asking people, and he asked me. I had twelve bucks on me, two ones and one ten. If I give him any of my money, I have to use the ten and it gets locked in a “change card” that is only good for the bus.
I decide, “What the hell” and give him the ten instead. He’s quite stunned. He says, “God bless you. I’m not even religious, but God bless you.” I was touched, but left with a troublesome thought.
Why is it that it seems to be a commonly accepted idea that, in order to be virtuous, you must first be religious? Whatever happened to extending good will for its own sake?
1) You did the right thing, AND you were a sucker.
2) The whole purpose of this blog is to remind people that ethics is not based on religion (morality is). If you have to be good to ensure that you won’t be rotting in Hell for eternity, you’re not really being good—you’re just being rational.
Thanks alot – your answer solved all my problems after several days stgrulging