John Reilly: Minnesota cafe beats the recession with kindness
In the opening scene of “The Godfather,” aggrieved local undertaker Amerigo Bonasera visits Don Corleone and asks for vengeance upon his daughter’s boyfriend who had beaten her beyond recognition.
Bonasera had been previously reluctant to ask a favor of Corleone for fear that he would be held to a debt that he could not repay. Corleone, of course, was offended by the request. This man had never before offered a hand of friendship or respect, yet on the day of his daughter’s wedding, Bonasera begged for justice.
Corleone consented under the following timeless stipulation…
“Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this justice a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.”
While he was obviously sympathetic to the request of Bonasera, Corleone’s empathy clearly was not without an agenda. And this gets me wondering … In today’s dog-eat-dog society, do we have the capacity to do something for another without expecting something in return? Do random acts of kindness really exist? Or are we being conditioned to be unkind?
Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California-Riverside has studied human happiness for 15 years, and she thinks practicing kindness is inherent.
“It’s rooted in our genes,” Professor Lyubomirsky told me. “Our early societies couldn’t have endured otherwise. They depended on each other, and they needed cooperation to survive.”
But do people today care about kindness?
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